Senseless
by FeugoFox42
Summary: How can you see when you've been blind your whole life? How do you tell someone your feelings when your voice is no longer there? And why would anyone care about a small bit of paper? Multi-chapter story. Orange Sorbet-centric Fic, Crosshares as well. Rated T for Language, Violence, alluded Lemon and one scene of semi-graphic Gore. The Final Part is in progress.
1. Starting with Nothing

_This takes place in an AU where Cinder and her group never entered the Vytal Festival and therefore never attempted to sabotage it, meaning another genuine team from Haven fought. The story starts after the Vytal Festival is over and lives have continued as normal - starting roughly around the end of the third/start of the fourth semester in that academic year. Cinder's gang is still around, but they're doing much more low-level crime stuff than the grandeur we've seen them pull in canon._

 _In this AU Penny won the Vytal Festival, because I said so (it doesn't factor into the story)._

 _Cover Image: Commission from FJ+Tikoriko_ _. Check them out on DeviantArt tikoriko **dot** deviantart **dot** com (no spaces). All credit to the original artist_

* * *

 _This story is dedicated to user_ _ **Status-Endless**_ _, the only other person on this site to have written any Orange Sorbet [Neo x Fox] centric FanFic. (Seriously, search for Fox and Neo stories on here and there are FOUR - all by her)_

 _This one's for you, mon amie!_

* * *

' _In dreams we enter a world that's entirely our own._ ' Fox remembered that from when his Mother used to read him books before bed. The third Harry Potter book, if he recalled correctly. It was his favourite quote from all the books he'd had read to him. He'd never made it past the fourth book when he was younger due to timing and the fact the books started to get _really_ dark, but he hung onto the fact that he would finish them before Beacon was out. And he hung to that quote too, like a lifeline.

Like everyone else who could, Fox dreamed. He had good dreams, like the time he dreamt he saw his family - Mother and Father and his two siblings, and his teammates all gathered round a table feasting and laughing and being merry; and he had bad dreams, like the time he dreamt he saw his family - Mother and Father and his two siblings, and his teammates all killed before his eyes by the vicious and ravenous Nothing, their screams echoing through his mind as if they were right beside him.

For Fox, tonight was a bad dream night. The copper haired boy threw himself up screaming, the sound frightening the shy Faunus girl with acute hearing awake and their team leader as well. The scream also woke Yatsuhashi, but he knew that when Coco heard his partner scream and went to console him his input would not be needed. Coco was a brilliant leader, she could handle it.

"Whoa whoa, Fox, easy. Easy now." Having had plenty of practice and experience dealing with not only his but her own partner's insecurities, the still sleepy fashionista rested one hand on Fox's exposed and scarred back, the second grabbing his hand and holding it to his own heart so that he could feel it racing. "Feel it?" Though still breathing sporadically, he nodded. "Fix it." One tactic she often used to calm him was to make him feel how hard his heart was beating and thus make him realise his state and force him to calm down via his own means, usually through low-level meditation as taught by Yatsuhashi over their break between first and second semester in Year One. Fox focussed on his breathing; he held his own hand closer to his chest to feel the speed of his heart and matched his intakes and releases of breaths with each pump. After perfectly matching, he slowed his breaths down and as a result brought his heartrate down as well. It was simple, but so effective. His heart rested much closer to its normal bpm before Coco asked him the mandatory question. "So, what was it this time? The Nothing again?" Fox named the beast of his nightmares The Nothing, as that is what he imagined true blindness felt like - a void that consumed all that he held dear. Most people knew him to be blind; all medical experts he spoke to would agree and by their own words he was technically and medically blind. But he was not sightless, not 'truly blind' per se. He could see, in more ways than one.

For starters, when he opened his eyes there was a distinction between the two states. He saw light. That was about the only thing he saw. The only time he could see anything else was when it was right up in front of his face. If Fox balled his hand to a fist, then placed the second knuckle of his thumb on the tip of his nose, then raised his little finger upwards, his finger would be blurry near beyond recognition and anything past that was just a giant wad of not-dark; he didn't really know colours but he knew it wasn't dark. He was so short sighted that no lenses would be powerful enough to fix his vision even as a child, and as time went on his vision worsened because when you don't use anything for a long time, your body stops trying to get you to use it. As Fox wasn't using his eyes, why focus on trying to make them better? The second reason was because of his semblance. Whether it was always going to manifest itself like this or whether it was pure coincidence he did not know, but his semblance allows him to see around him by bursting his Aura into the ground and having things bounce back to him; kind of like echo location. Fox saw what everyone's Aura looked like and how it moved inside and around them. Yatsuhashi's Aura flowed peacefully around his body like an olive green river, Coco's caramel coloured Aura danced around her body normally, but much like Velvet's deep scarlet Aura, calmed and pulsated in unison whenever the two were around each other. Creatures of Grimm were easy to identify as well; they bounced back darkness. Not exactly a void, but an area of darkness nonetheless.

"No. This was different. It was new." Her eyebrows arched as she sat on the side of her teammate's bed; Fox seldom had 'new' nightmares, it always came back to The Nothing in some way, shape or form.

"How was it different Fox?" Velvet sleepily shifted her weight in her bed as well, listening to the conversation.

"I saw us together. We were in a large space, not outside. It felt new, but old at the same time. I sensed all of the Kingdoms in this place but never any people. Just us. We were all together when I felt a sharp pain. Unimaginable, almost indescribable. Suddenly I saw more figures. Another team maybe? One of them held something, I couldn't make out what but it was small. I remember dying. I heard my name called in a voice I've never heard before. And that's when I woke up." The team leader shot her girlfriend a look making sure she didn't look terrified at the story - as much as she loved her, she was scared very easily and sometimes it was a little difficult to calm both her and Fox down at once. Fortunately, she appeared to be more curious than scared.

"Fox, it was just a bad dream. You know this."

"But it felt so real. That voice sounded new and so real..."

"I know buddy, I know." She gave the scarred boy a quick hug before standing. "Try to get back to sleep, we'll work through it in the morning." The boy nodded and lay back down to rest once again. He heard Coco wander over to Velvet's bunk and kiss her before going back to her own bed. Milky white eyes shifted away from the scene he didn't see. Deep down in his heart he wanted something like that; someone to love who loved him back in the way Coco and Velvet loved one another. But who could love this? Yatsuhashi had always said, "Never fall asleep feeling negative emotions, your dreams will reflect your state of mind" - wise words, but ultimately fruitless in this case. Fox slept feeling disheartened at what he didn't have. But then he recalled that voice. It was soft and new; a voice unlike any other. It sounded worn down, and the cry felt like one of desperation. Who was that? He decided to dwell on that thought no longer, and closed his eyes once more for (hopefully) a much more uneventful rest of the night.

* * *

When discussing evil plans, there are often a few things that need to be thought out: What the goal is. Who's going to do what. How much time do you have to complete the task. Interference, what would you do if and when it comes. Back-up Plans. All that sort of thing. But most importantly, it's how the 'team' is going to communicate throughout the mission that doesn't result in compromise.

The key word there being 'communicate'.

As much as she enjoyed doing this thing with her "friends", Neo wasn't a huge fan of having to have a babysitter throughout the entire mission due to her inability to speak. Hands down, she was the second most capable person in the entire room when it came to fighting and planning, second only to Cinder herself. But because she herself couldn't communicate to anyone she _needed_ to be with someone so that the rest of the group could know when their side of things were over. Fortunately for her 'team', she was much more of a do-er than a talker anyway, but that didn't mean she wasn't much of a thinker. It also made her feel like a child. It was scary to think how often she was made to feel like less of a person than the rest. Roman often called her throwaway names like 'kiddo'. Cinder detested being with her at all. Emerald and Mercury had both on separate occasions tried accidently forgetting about her or losing her on the mission so that she wouldn't come back with them. Honestly, she wished that she could leave them all. But because of everything she had done with these people she was a wanted woman and there were very few places on Remnant she could go without being recognised and arrested - this was her life now.

The petite woman sat on a crate away from everyone else as the plan was discussed in detail.

"So, it should be arriving in the next few minutes. We don't want to strike for the next day or two because they always have measures for that." Cinder Fall was highly experienced in this sort of thing, she knew how security was handled. Roman, who also had years of experience over the three younger members, added his own information to the table.

"After two days of high level security, numbers drop off steadily to free staff up for jobs elsewhere. Day five or six is probably when they're at equal parts most comfortable and lowest numbers and that's when we ought to strike. These guys are idiots."

"The shipment contains only a single item, an artefact. But that item is essential for the plan - I will not be leaving that place without it." That was all Neo believed she needed to hear, so she zoned out from that point onwards.

"So, what is it? You hadn't told any of us what it is before and frankly, I don't want to be risking my life for some trivial gift shop statue." Cinder smirked at Emerald's comment, willing to share the information with her colleague.

"I did not mention it due to the level of importance that item to everything we do from this point out. Had I told any of you and the information was to make its way to the authorities, to Huntsmen, to Ozpin, then the entire thing is ruined. Call it 'Need to Know Information'. Until now, you had no need." The tattooed woman grabbed one of the scrolls from the floor and unravelled it to show a sketch of the artefact, various small Polaroid photos spilling out as well. "The item is said to be from a time before humanity as we know it. The Parchment of Volentes."

"Never heard of it" Mercury scoffed.

"With good reason. The Parchment of Volentes only ever materialises in this world every century or so but it can do amazing things. That's why archaeological groups from all over Remnant were so keen to keep it under wraps. Unfortunately for them - and fortunately for us - the curator, along with people in high places on the governing body, won the argument and it's being stored in a museum with heavy security and round the clock surveillance so that no one could misuse it."

"Yeah, but what does it do?" The silver grey haired boy snapped at his boss' waffling. Fiery eyes and tattoos glowed as the woman snapped back.

"Keep quiet and I might tell you!" Her tone struck fear into the boy. Emerald held his arm with her own, comforting him but mostly to steady herself. "The artefact can grant the one who possesses it a wish. There are-"

"What like a Genie?" Emerald lowered her head immediately, realising that she had voiced her own thoughts aloud when they were meant to be in her head. "Sorry..."

"As I was saying, there are a handful of documented wishes that can _never_ be granted. The second ever wish from the Parchment was the wish for eternal life. That man perished instantly and his remains along with the artefact itself vanished from existence for centuries. The second un-grantable wish was for infinite power, which frustrated me when I first saw that but I have figured a work around which I will explain later. The third is duplicating the Parchment of Volentes itself. This has only..."

The Faction had been planning this heist for ages now, ever since an anonymous tip-off about it some months prior. And from the get go, Neo seemed uninterested. Why would they want to steal a new artefact? There were plenty of museums that they could rob right now and steal from. It'd take far less planning and it could be done right now. Heck, with how often she was ignored in this place, she could have very easily slipped away and stolen something for them now. Or at the very least, it was something to do to preoccupy herself. She instead sat on the crate alone with her thoughts.

' _What would you even do if you left here? Where would you go?_ ' Basic questions she asked herself on a regular basis yet never found the time or energy to either answer them in her mind or bite the bullet and leave to figure out the answers in real life. She was... wait, what?! There was something that the group beside her had just mentioned that she felt a strong urge to listen to. She clapped once to draw attention to herself, a signal the four people around the table turned to. She wasn't sure if what she heard was right or whether she had interpreted it based on her train of thought, so she simply signed to the group one word;

" _Repeat._ "

"Thank you for actually paying attention for once Neo" Cinder hissed. "I'm not repeating everything so I'll be brief; this artefact is said to grant any user a wish of their choice, with a few documented exceptions. If we get this, there would be nothing to stop us from fulfilling our goal. Did you hear it that time?" Semi-sheepishly, Neo nodded and shuffled back onto her box.

' _This is it Neo. Your chance. You can escape this madness and live your life._ ' The ice cream themed girl smiled a genuine smile and focussed in on the plan - this was the first time in years that she actively listened to the plan as it was being revealed, rather than figuring it out or being spoon fed it as it went along. This was maybe the one and only opportunity to be free, and you bet she was going to grab that opportunity by the horns.

* * *

Hey guys!

So I'm back and I've got this story for y'all to enjoy. It may be very tricky as no one has ever done one of this length with Fox and Neo as the central pair. And as this is the hook to get you interested, I'm feeling nice. Expect Chapter 2 of **Senseless** tomorrow morning.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	2. A Brief History of Dreams

"So," she said as she wiped her mouth clean "what can you remember about your dream Fox?"

"I'm not sure Velvet. I try to forget about my nightmares." He stared blankly at his food, focussing on the plate to hopefully discourage his teammates from prying. He was lying, of course. But this one wasn't really one he was up for discussing openly, he needed time to process it himself first.

"But you mentioned how real it felt, surely there has to be some reason behind why it felt like that."

"I agree with Velvet." The deep voice of Yatsuhashi sent a shiver down Fox's scarred spine. Not because it was threatening or anything, but purely because was so damn deep. "It seems to me that your nightmare last night was more than just a dream. It sounds more like a premonition." Milky eyes looked up towards his partner.

"A premonition? Yatsu, I can barely see anything. I have been like this since I was a boy. How can I be getting dreams of what might happen if I don't even know what is happening right now?"

"Tiresias was a man from the times of the First Civilisation long before the Grimm or Dust were ever known to the world who saw nothing with his eyes and yet still could communicate with the Gods of his time and was known for his clairvoyance. His blindness did not affect his ability to predict the future; it enhanced it and made him view the world in a different light. The lack of natural sight made his own predictions less biased to opinion and most, if not all, seemed to come true."

"I am not Tiresias, Yatsu. I'm me. That sort of thing happens to me one time and you start spouting knowledge about a blind prophet from a time long since past?"

"I was merely attempting to ease your mind on the possibility of this being a more regular occurring event."

"Well it isn't helping!" Coco felt a little uneasy sitting between the two at the moment. Yatsuhashi was a big guy, a walking tank by anyone's standards and not the sort of person you'd want to pick a fight with, unless you had a death wish. But Fox seemed to be incredibly short-tempered with everyone this morning and having an argument with Yatsuhashi right over her head wasn't exactly the way she wanted to start the day. Maybe that dream hit him harder than she thought. She decided to take action.

"Easy boys. Fox, with me." She dropped her cutlery on her tray and rose quickly with it. Seizing the opportunity to leave the conversation, Fox stopped eating as well.

"Gladly." Even saying that to his leader was sharp. It definitely needed to be discussed. Not with the others though, just the pair of them.

"Apologise to Professor Port for us if we're not back." Velvet nodded and lowered her head back to her plate. It was clear she felt a little guilty for initially prying. Yatsuhashi also fell silent. He felt ashamed for what he said and it was clear he felt he had made the situation worse. After they had handed their trays back, the two of them walked away from the cafeteria and took a leisurely stroll around the grounds. Coco said nothing deliberately. Fox said nothing because he was angry at first. As time passed in silence he grew more and more frustrated at it; it was as if he'd lost another one of his senses, the lack of noise frustrated him.

"What did you want Coco?"

"Finally!" she cried. "I thought we were going to have to walk around in silence all day. I wanted you to tell me about your dream." Before he could open his mouth again, Coco finished her sentence. "But on your terms; not mine, not Yatsuhashi's, not Velvet's. It's why I didn't ask before, why I made you speak first. And now I will let you speak about it as much as you want." Fox smirked. She was good. But that's why she's in charge.

"Okay, I will tell. Can we sit?" They found a bench close by and sat before Fox started recounting the event. "Contrary to what I said earlier to Velvet, I remember my nightmares vividly. This one was no exception. The setting is what seemed most confusing about everything - that ancient newness, if that makes sense to you." The fashionista's head nodded to let the boy continue. She didn't know what he was on about but having Fox continuing to talk gave her time to think.

' _So long as he doesn't ask you what you think it could mean Coco, you're in the clear._ '

"So, what do you think it means then?"

' _Shit._ ' "Well, I mean... you say that it felt like the place was old, but at the same time it felt new, right?" The copper haired boy nodded. "So, that could mean that it's a place that is originally quite old but has recently been refurbished or something, hence why it feels new. So where in Vale has recently been given a new lick of paint but the building itself if relatively old." Fox's expression changed as he countered her claim on the building's location.

"It might not be in Vale."

"Huh?" ' _Damn it and I thought I had managed to bullshit my way out of there quite well..._ ' "What're you thinking?"

"Well I remember sensing all of the Kingdoms in that one space, so it could be anywhere. But at the same time we can't be deployed on missions outside of Vale until our final year. So actually that either means it's a long way off before this event happens - if it does at all - or it is actually still in Vale. To be honest, I'm not sure which option I'd prefer."

"Fox remember; it's a dream. It happened in the past and you need to move..." The girl's thoughts strayed as she said the words once again. Something added up in her head as she spoke. "Dream?" ' _No_ ' "Past?" ' _Maybe, but why?_ ' "Past... past..." It clicked again. "Past! Fox, the Vale Museum! A place that is quite new filled with trinkets and memorabilia from all four Kingdom's histories. Fox that has to be it! You saw us fighting something or someone there!" The words made sense to the boy as well, that would explain a lot about the dream.

"I think you got it Coco. The dream took place at the Museum!"

' _Coco, you clever little shit you._ ' She took a mental note to reward herself later as she stood, ushering her teammate to do the same. "C'mon Fox, we've got to tell Ozpin or Professor Goodwitch. If what you dreamt could actually happen, they ought to know."

"We ought to know what?" The second years jumped as the two people they were just talking about walked up the pair of them.

"Sorry Professors, you startled us."

"We are aware, and I tried to explain to Professor Ozpin here that sneaking up on a blind student is most unwise. Yet here we are."

"Yes, I do apologise for that." The green clad Headmaster took a sip from his cup before he continued. "However it is coincidental how both parties needed to be in touch with one another at the same time."

"Sir?" Fox's head cocked sideways in confusion.

"We wanted to inform you that we have a new mission for you and your team, Ms. Adel. And my guess would be you already can suss where you may be going and what it may be regarding." Coco had figured it out, so answered his comment with a question.

"Does this have anything to do with Fox's nightmare?"

"Oh dear, a nightmare? I'm sorry to hear you had one Mr. Alistair." The two students looked at each other puzzled; surely he had to know Fox had a nightmare about what he did, else he wouldn't have mentioned the fact that they knew where they were going. He was being extremely vague - more so than usual.

"So, where exactly would be we posted?"

"All will be revealed in briefing, if your team is willing to take up the task at hand."

"Of course we are sir."

"Ms. Adel," Goodwitch chimed in, "May I remind you that all members of a team are supposed to be consulted before agreeing to undertake any mission, as per the rules of this Academy."

"But we don't know what we're doing. We can't agree to something if we don't what we're agreeing to; even the slightest information could help us make a decision."

"Very well; but just this once" the Headmaster said, sipping from his cup once again. "It will be a Security Based Mission of the greatest of importance. I cannot divulge any more information than that due to the risk that it may pose until I have had the entire team's approval in person. So should you wish to undertake this mission, the briefing will be held at 1:30pm in my office today. It is a very important mission, and you would need plenty of time to prepare for it, hence the short space of time I have given you to decide. I will also authorise your team's absence from your lectures should you come see me. Understood?"

"Yes sir" the pair replied in unison. The two adults smiled and turned away.

* * *

1:27pm. There was a ring from the far end of the room as the elevator announced that it would be arriving within the next few seconds. After that time had passed, metallic doors slid open and Team CFVY walked into Professor Ozpin's office atop the Tower in Beacon Academy.

"Welcome Team CFVY. You're early."

"We know you don't like to wait too long, sir."

"Indeed you are right Ms. Adel. I take it there was unanimous agreement on accepting this mission." Four heads nodded at the man.

"Yes sir."

"Good. Then let us brief." The four students approached the desk he sat at, looking at the small pile of paper in front of him. "Have you ever heard of the Parchment of Volentes?" All four students answered with a resounding no. "Good. I'd like you to keep it that way. Once the mission is complete I will explain more about it in your de-brief. All you need to know about it is that it has been documented to be one of the most powerful items on the planet. A single touch grants he, or she, who touches the power of a Being beyond comprehension. The only thing is, it can be used once then it disappears for a hundred years or so."

"Forgive my interruption sir," Yatsuhashi spoke purposefully, "but why must we protect this item if it is to potentially disappear for a hundred years again?"

"A valid question Mr. Daichi, and one that will be answered in due time." The tall man nodded in appreciation of his query being answered, albeit partially. "As I mentioned, the Parchment of Volentes is said to be powerful. And as Mr. Daichi said - and I'm sure you all figured out - I have tasked you all to protect the item."

"Surely the Vale authorities would provide much better protection than we ever could sir."

"Against normal, everyday crooks - perhaps. But these aren't them. Sources believe that Roman Torchwick, along with a few other notable people of infamy he's worked with in the past, are working together once more to capture this item and use its - shall we say, mystical properties - for themselves. That is why I want Team CFVY there; if these criminals are there then we need a strong team to combat them. If you could apprehend them as well, that would be an added bonus and may even play to your favour when it comes to reviewing the mission."

"We'd be delighted to take on this task sir" Coco grinned as she spoke, this was the first proper time their task hadn't involved Grimm in any way and it was an exhilarating thought. Sure, it meant more planning, but that was the second best part sometimes. Her teammates seemed to match her enthusiasm.

"I'm glad to hear that. You will be based around the new exhibition showing off the partially revealed Parchment of Volentes in the Vale History Museum." Milky eyes widened and turned towards the beret wearing girl sitting near him. The Vale Museum. Maybe Yatsu wasn't kidding about the whole 'blind prophet' thing. If his vision was to be taken literally, they will all die. If they didn't, Fox had some serious apologising to do. Ozpin continued on over the scarred boy's thoughts. "The Parchment arrived only yesterday evening, so they could strike at any time. But going off previous heists from these people, they don't usually strike immediately. I'm going to give you two days before I post you there. In that time, I expect you to formulate a plan."

"Understood Professor."

"Good. Are there any questions about your mission?" Three members shook their heads knowing that everything they wanted to know had been answered. Fox, however, remained silent for a second or two - he didn't even know what he wanted to know. In the end, he shook his head as well. "Excellent. I shall arrange an airship to drop you off outside the Museum just before it closes at 4:30pm in two days' time."

"No need Professor Ozpin, we can walk. It's not like it's that much of a hike to the Museum." With a slight chuckle, Ozpin let the team make their own way there. He dismissed them shortly after. The ride down the elevator seemed so much longer than it had ever been before for Fox. Maybe for Coco as well, but she didn't seem to be showing it.

"Guys, my nightmare was in the Museum." Cute little rabbit ears lay down on Velvet's head as she processed her friend's words.

"So, do you think that means we'll..." what she wanted to say wouldn't come out anyway, but Coco stopped her girlfriend's train of thought before she uttered another word.

"No Velvs, that means nothing. What it means is that Fox somehow saw what _might_ happen in this place _if_ they get their hands on this thing. It also means we are going to do everything we possibly can to avoid that happening at all. Right?" Her team rallied behind her as the doors finally slid open on the ground floor. They'd have to have an extensive plan for this; if they failed, Fox's nightmare could become their reality.

* * *

Hey guys!

I stand by my previous comment, this one is going to be monstrously tricky, _no one else_ has written something of this scope with them. But I will do my best for everyone to keep my promise of weekly uploads of the story, maintaining the quality I know some of you look for in my work.

This one's going to be a real test of my skills...

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	3. Setting Up

The team left Beacon on foot around about 10:00am. By Fox's calculation, they could make it to the Museum itself by 11:30am, given them more than enough time to scout the location completely and then set themselves up. Which was perfect, they needed to know that place inside and out if they were going to be protecting it. But they all knew that they weren't due to arrive there until 4:30pm to scout around and even that was plenty of time. They decided leaving this early also meant that the team could take their time with things and enjoy themselves for what could possibly be their last ever mission. The entire team were thinking positively - they were not going to fail this mission and they would return to Beacon alive - but Fox and Velvet suggested that because there is a slight chance that they could die they should spent the time beforehand together as a team.

Coco took Velvet to her favourite store and spent a good deal of time looking through clothes that would show off her girlfriend in the most amazing way. She did mention to the gentleman that was helping them that they had a mission to go on so couldn't take anything today but providing the pair of them make it back alive this'll be her first stop. He didn't seem to mind too much. Yatsuhashi wandered around Vale aimlessly, taking in the sights he had seen many times before, but he never once complained. Fox found his way to the park and sunbathed under a willow tree by the makeshift pond, the cool breeze blowing through his hair and the faint sound of flowing water relaxing his mind. It was his favourite spot.

They all met up again early afternoon to have lunch together. Fox had a large steak – medium rare – and chips, Yatsuhashi ate a chicken wrap with rice and beans, Velvet and Coco shared a large pizza with extra vegetables, but Coco ruined the team's fairly 'healthy' streak by ordering an ice cream sundae with both chocolate and caramel sauce on top for pudding. She mentioned how she still needed to reward herself for sussing out Fox's dream, and this was her reward. They left there with spirits high and appetites appeased, and made it to the entrance of the Museum at 3:52pm.

The team had never actually been inside the Museum itself. They'd walked past it plenty of times, but never inside and it was spectacular. Velvet's eyes were drawn to the ornate ceiling that decorated the main entrance. Yatsuhashi felt like exploring the Museum and taking in all the information he could. Coco kept restraining Velvet from leaping towards anything she found of interest, rattling off any information she knew on the object in question.

"I appreciate the thought, but I don't need a guided tour of the place guys." Fox said semi-jokingly "Do you think we can set up first and stare later?" The three others caught up to Fox and headed to their designated spot. They set themselves up in employee lounge adjacent from the room with the display in, that way they could respond quickly if some of them were asleep. As per their norm, the team ensured that each other's Scrolls were operational and that their in-ear radios worked as well. Once that was all sorted, Team CFVY readied themselves for the mission ahead.

The first night they spent there was a recon night. After everyone had a look at the Parchment (or sensing and familiarising himself with the unique signature it gave off when using his semblance, in Fox's case) Yatsuhashi and Velvet had a much more in-depth and studied look of the artefact, trying to spot various little things that would identify it against a fake copy whilst Fox and Coco made a head start on getting a feel for the Museum's structure and interior layout. It was their one chance they had to learn everything they could about the place; how each floor was layered, which rooms led to which other rooms, where the little secret staff doorways were and how much of the floor could be cut out by using them. Once both parties had shared all their individual Intel, Fox and Velvet went to establish their patrol routes for their time here whilst the remaining two members of the team convened in the room once more to figure out a strategy. Coco's mind was incredible when it came to things like this. She loved her fashion, that was obvious, but this sort of thing was truly where she exceled.

Early on in CFVY's time at Beacon she had devised a way to maximise the processing of information in the team. Yatsuhashi and her would pair up with either Velvet or Fox first - depending on the situation at hand - and do something together. In this case, getting the layout of the Museum and studying the artefact. Then the two shyer teammates would pair up and go through one of the things that were discussed in their pairs earlier and have them explain it to the other - Fox pointing out all of the little nooks and crannies that people could hide in to Velvet. There were times where Fox felt bad having to have Velvet just listen to him rather than she showing him something, but there were occasions such as this mission where she physically could do nothing about that; he didn't have the eyesight to identify the little nuances that separated a fake from the original. On the flip side, Velvet couldn't sense the artefact, so it kind of evened out in the end. The final part was to get them to explain to both Yatsuhashi and Coco simultaneously what the plan was. Coco and Yatsuhashi were shown what their patrol routes would be by Velvet, who had amended them ever so slightly from what Fox had suggested so that there were less of the secret hiding and traversing spots that intruders could exploit. Fox this time listened to Coco explain the strategy for what happens when they come in and how they were going to deal with them. This entire process took them from early evening to about 11:15pm. The rest of the night was spent walking the patrol routes and catching up on some rest between shifts.

The second night was completely uneventful.

As was the third.

But on night four...

* * *

Vale Authorities have to go down as probably the most and least fun Neo ever had concerning hurting people. They are so stupidly dumb that she could watch an endless line of them jump off a cliff with a smile plastered upon her face like a masochist. And yet, there was no fun in beating up Average Joe's who are just trying to make a way of living.

' _Not long now Neo. Once you're inside, you can make a break for it._ ' Cinder's snapping fingers broke the small woman out of her pleasant daydreams and instead swapped them out for the greyness of reality.

"In your own time Neo." Multi-coloured eyes narrowed at her boss as she caught up to the rest of the group. "Now we've had word that a security detail has been posted in preparation for our arrival, so it's clear that someone beforehand knew what our end game would be, or at the very least knew our hand. I'm going to assume it's a Huntsmen Team from Ozpin's 'illustrious' school, so be on your guard." Roman felt uneasy about hearing that.

"I swear, if I have to deal with those same girls one more time, I'm just gonna kill them where they stand. I am sick to death of them ruining everything I do!"

"I share your annoyance Roman, but I doubt it's them." He breathed a sigh of relief, but was still hesitant on completely relaxing just yet.

"So," Mercury said "how are we getting in?"

"Same as we planned; we go in separately and so long as two of us make it to the room the rest can cause a diversion so that they can grab the item and leave." Everyone nodded and readied themselves to leave. "Remember, we do not leave her without it!" Those last words ringing in her mind, Neo shot off towards where she was supposed to be assigned. But the second everyone was out of sight, she doubled back and went to the same entrance as Emerald. She would be the closest to the Parchment and so that was the best opening to make her move. For once she felt she had a real sense of purpose on this mission. Her own purpose.

* * *

Fox's ears twitched at the feeling of unfamiliar footsteps flowing through the room he was just about to leave. It wasn't any of the regular guards, they had been knocked down to a skeleton crew for tonight and even then most of them were on perimeter duty. These were new footsteps. Fox slinked into one of the hidden corners of the room and activated his semblance. He saw a circle of energy emitting from his body and radiating outwards. As it did, things became clearer in his mind. He saw all the artefacts and pieces of art in that room. He could retrace where his past few steps were taken as the residual energy from each step still stained the floor - although most of them were fading and, the thing he was 'hoping' for, he felt an unfamiliar Aura coming from the far side of the room, sneaking its way towards the exhibition. The scarred boy pressed the button on his in-ear radio and spoke to the rest of his group.

"They're here. One's on the Second Floor, Great War Wing. Keep vigilant, I'm tailing this one." With the rest of his team aware that they were not alone in the Museum any more, he started following. Fox could tell a lot about a person from their footsteps. This person has had a fair amount of experience when it comes to being sneaky, but not tonnes. This can't be Cinder then. She's - he could tell that it's a she - very careless when it comes to this as well. It seemed to Fox like she had something that she would rely on more than her ability to be subtle, hence the carelessness. But that worked in the favour of Fox.

Yatsuhashi heard Fox's call and lay low. Being 7ft tall made it very difficult to be as stealthy as the rest of his team. But he had trained for many years and in that time he honed the skills necessary to hide himself with inactivity. He sat perfectly still, legs crossed to maintain balance, his inhales sharp and silent and exhales long so to keep the noise he generated to a minimum, his heart beating slowly to so that he could remain there indefinitely unmoving like the hulking statue he was. And that's when he heard it. A faint metallic clunking in a step. Someone was close, someone with robotic enhancements on their legs. Yatsuhashi informed the rest of team.

"Top Floor, Atlas Wing. Male, probable cybernetic enhancements on legs. I've got him." It was very hard for him to keep quiet with a deep booming voice like his, but he managed. As the clunking disappeared from the room altogether, the tank rose to follow him.

Humming? This guy clearly wasn't very good. Velvet stayed out of sight as the person she heard approached where she was. A dark figure swooped into her view, still humming that tune quietly to himself. She gasped quietly as she noted his appearance; white overcoat, bowler hat, cane. This was Roman Torchwick himself. Her initial instincts were to run, Roman had a few run-ins with the White Fang before and he had expressed his utter distain for the extremist Faunus Group and every other Faunus to boot, so her being the one to confront him wouldn't be the best thing to ever happen to her. At the same time, who knows what'll happen if she didn't. She composed herself as she spoke to her team and slid her small frame out into the open.

"Roman is on the First Floor, I'll deal with him."

Coco heard her partner's words and responded with haste.

"Be careful, hun." ' _That was stupid_ ' she reminded herself afterwards. ' _You're a Huntress; you shouldn't do that on a mission._ ' At the same time, she realised she didn't care what she should or shouldn't have done; her girlfriend was going to fight Roman Torchwick. The fashionista's attention was drawn away from her own thoughts and towards the very obvious clicking of heels on the floor making their way towards her location. Coco ducked behind a statue and waited while they walked past her. As she was about to leave the room, Coco gave orders to her team.

"I have one in the Faunus Suite on the Ground Floor; that's everyone. Take them out as best you can, radio in once you're done."

"Understood Coco. Yatsuhashi out."

"Got it. Velvet out."

"Will do. Fox out." And with that, Coco stepped out from her hiding place and confronted the person in question.

"Y'know, heels might not have been the smartest choice for a heist." The rhythmic clicking stopped as the culprit turned to look at the second year student.

"Well, one of us has to look good doing this thing." Coco's eyes widened in shock, then promptly narrowed in anger as she dropped her stance slightly.

"See, now I've _got_ to hurt you." Fiery eyes glowed as Cinder smirked at the remark from the student.

* * *

This is quite a slow burner, I will admit. But it gives me a little more time to flesh out the world a bit. Just give me time

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	4. A Touchy Subject Matter

Yatsuhashi was the second team member to make himself known. He followed the footsteps out of the room and into the next and saw the man standing there. It looked like he was waiting for him, so the student mentioned it.

"Have you been expecting me?" Mercury turned himself around and gave an unsatisfied shrug.

"I guess. I have to be honest big guy, you're not the best at silent are you?"

"I can be when I choose to be."

"But clearly not when you need it. I heard your little talk to your team; they know I'm here and that you're with me. Which means you have no choice but to fight me." Yatsuhashi had no time to respond as the silver-grey haired boy fired his boots off and rocketed himself at his opponent. Mercury flipped halfway along the distance and almost collided with the tall student feet first were it not for the fact Yatsuhashi had already unsheathed his weapon from his back and brought it up to parry the strike. The impact was still forceful enough to send the student skidding backwards, but not enough to hurt him.

As the Greatsword pushed the strike away, two shots were fired from Mercury's boots catching him off guard and knocking him off balance. Mercury landed and jumped in for another strike. The tank had regained his composure by the time that came around and blocked each strike with a parry with his sword. Neither of them seemed to tire as kicks kept coming and parries met each kick. Every so often, Mercury leapt away and fired a few shots towards the student or the artwork around the place. Yatsuhashi was constantly in two minds whether he should take the shot to avoid the historical items being damaged or destroyed, or whether he should dodge the attack and risk ruining an artefact that had survived countless years of Atlas history.

In an effort to go on the offensive, Yatsuhashi parried Mercury's latest onslaught wide, knocking him off balance. This was his opportunity. He quickly charged at the smaller man and caught him with his shoulder, forcing the wind out of him, then swiftly swung the sword under as a rising strike with immense force which caught the boy in the stomach and slicing the skin slightly, the pure power behind that last strike caused a slight lapse in Mercury's concentration and prevented him from using his Aura to his fullest to block it completely. With one final attack Yatsuhashi grabbed Mercury by his head and slammed him down into the floor, knocking him out. The impact could be felt multiple floors underneath as both Roman and Velvet looked up in slight panic as the shockwave spread through the building, faint particles of dust and debris falling from the tiles on the ceiling. Roman caught a glimpse of the rabbit Faunus and smiled.

"Well, well, well; what do we have here? A cute little bunny came here to thwart me?" The student took a step back at the remark, offended by his words. But she remembered she couldn't run away else they would fail the mission. "Word of advice, let me be. I'm here for something and I've been told I'm not to walking out of here without it so I'll just be on my way."

"You're not going to be walking out of here at all. You're going to leave here in custody." He faked a gasp, clearly not intimidated by the threat.

"No, not custody! Anything but that!" The jokey façade disappeared just as suddenly as it appeared. "Listen bun-bun, I've been doing this thing for years now. I know how this works, and it never ends well for the likes of you. You will end up in hospital with broken bones at _best_. C'mon I'm giving you a chance to walk away scot free." Velvet looked down, her eyes obscured by her fringe. "Oh what's wrong bunny? Did I say something to upset you?" She stretched her arm to the side as a blue, hard light copy of Crescent Rose formed in her hand.

"Don't. EVER. Call me 'Bun-Bun' again." And she threw herself towards the man with such speed and ferocity that he barely managed to avoid getting smacked across the face with the uncharacteristically large scythe.

' _Even when you're not here, you still manage to piss me off Little Red_ ' he thought, staring at the construct of the weapon.

Coco was in the same mind-set as Yatsuhashi was with regards to the artefacts in the room. She was much more of a ranged fighter, keeping Grimm at bay with barrage upon barrage of bullets from her Gatling gun whilst her more physical teammates rushed in and dealt with Grimm at a much more intimate level. Sure, she was capable at hand-to-hand combat, but it was never her bread and butter. And against someone like this whom she could only assume was a very skilled fighter she would much rather fall back to her comfort zone of really far away from them. But in doing that, she'd either risk her getting away - something that could happen in terms of the mission, but without a fight to prove she escaped rather than was allowed to get away, it'd look pretty bleak on the mission report - or she'd risk destroying everything in the room, and probably the neighbouring room as well.

' _I can't do that_ ' she thought to herself. ' _The Museum wouldn't be too grateful, especially if they got away._ '

Her mouth dried. That was really uncomforting at this moment in time, she wanted to feel in control of this situation like she does on every other mission, not feel like she was right back at the very beginning of her training panicking about going against another student with zero training just as she was. And Cinder caught on to that air of panic.

"Oh, what's this?" The smirk she wore grew as she sauntered towards the gunner. "Where was that bravado from a second ago? I thought you 'had' to hurt me. If you can lay a finger on me, I'm here to be hurt." A frustrated grunt passed the lips of the dual-coloured hair girl as she ran towards the tattooed woman. Within four paces of her, Coco reached across to grab her handbag and in one fluid motion detached it from her belt and swung it at her opponent. The weapon was stopped by a hand which shocked a gasp out of the girl. As burning eyes glowed ever brighter and the tattoos began to match, Coco snapped back into reality - albeit seconds too late - as a burning palm came from behind the woman and impacted Coco square in the gut, closely followed by a powerful burst of flaming Aura from said palm sending the girl careening into a statue of the Founder of the Atlas Military, reducing the marble artwork into a mess on the floor. Straining through the pain that she now felt basically everywhere, the fashionista eased herself up. Her eyed stung because of the fine particles of marble dust that still floated about in the air and because her sunglasses were gone to stop them- Her Sunglasses! She searched around a little bit on the floor of her immediate vicinity before her stinging eyes rose to see her designer eye protection halfway across the room, right by the woman who created the distance between them. In an instant, those sunglasses were smashed under the heels of the woman in an effort to intimidate the girl.

' _Okay, fuck the Museum -_ _ **no one**_ _touches my shit like that!_ ' She saw red as the small handbag unfolded revealing the huge Gatling gun that was housed inside.

Velvet's hard light weaponry and Roman's cane traded blows countless times. It was evident that Roman was the more skilled of the two fighters, but every time he started to gain the edge on her she'd swap out her weaponry and shifted the tide once more. It kept her versatile, it meant that people would need to adapt to so many different styles of fighting and that was usually a huge advantage. Another advantage to her abilities is that any projectiles don't cause damage to the surrounding area; they only affect what they need to. This meant that Velvet was the only one of her team who could use any sort of ranged weapon to keep her assailant at bay at the moment. As she swapped out Miló and Akoúo̱ for the grenade launcher that was Magnhild to open up some distance, streams of bullets fired up from the floor below, tearing through the (surprisingly thin and weak) floor/roof and caused a few things to come crashing down to Ground Level; Roman and Velvet being two such things. The partners stood side by side ready to take on the two crooks as a team.

Fox and Emerald's blades clashed over and over again. Each strike one made, the other countered perfectly. It was like a dance, only with less sequins and more aggression. They clashed once more, blades interlocking in a constant struggle as they goaded one another.

"Why don't you just give up kid?" Emerald quipped.

"Because I don't back away from a fight I know that I'll win!" Fox retorted.

"Funny, because I was thinking the same thing; but we can't both get our way!" She dropped her stance slightly and released the pushed she held quite evenly with Fox, causing him to stumble forward. With her opponent's centre of gravity all over the place she seized her moment, bringing her foot up to meet his chest and throwing him over her own head. Fox hit the wall with an impactful thud, but managed not to be so winded that he couldn't stand afterwards as he slid down to floor level. The girl's red eyes narrowed and focussed on Fox.

 _'I'll run towards the door with speed which, in his semi-winded state, he won't be able to keep up with. I'll lead him on a chase as far away from the artefact as I can get him before he realised it was never the case.'_

Only that didn't happen.

Instead, Fox attacked her directly once again. The attack struck her hard across the ribs, shifting her focus back to the fight at hand.

"What?" She cried in frustration as her sickles stopped herself from bearing the brunt of another one of this boy's attacks. She found another opening in his attack pattern and forced him away, trying her trick again.

 _'I'll try something more offensive this time. This time I'll jump onto the jump up high and fire down on him from above, forcing him to hide away from being hit. When he can't see where she is anymore, I'll sneak away and find my way to the Parchment of Volentes again._

That didn't happen either.

She felt the scarred elbow impact her right across the jaw, blurring her vision and sending pain to flow throughout her face.

"How does that not work on you?!" crying out again in anger.

"You _were_ trying something. I assume you were trying to cloud my vision, make it so that I could see how you wanted things to play out? Well," he walked towards her, his eyes finally in enough natural night light so that Emerald could see them "if I could see, that might have been effective." His gloat was cut short by the sound of footsteps running past him at a pace. He sensed quickly and realised that there was a second person with him, most likely heading straight for the artefact; the artefact that was on this floor.

"Neo! What are you-?" her sentence was cut short as Fox quickly but effectively delivered one more powerful strike to the girl's head, not exactly knocking her unconscious but rendering her brain frazzled long enough that Fox could run after this new person.

"Fox here; I've dealt with mine, but there's another with me up here and I think they're making their way straight to the artefact. I'm going after them."

"I can be of assistance to you Fox, are you still in the Great War Wing?"

"No time for that Yatsu! I'm following this person and I'm stopping them alone." Coco chimed in as she found room to breathe from the mini-battle she and Velvet were having on the Ground Floor.

"I don't think that's wise Fox." The boy elected to ignore the response from his own team leader, instead continuing as if her comment fell on deaf ears.

"The person I was with is currently incapacitated by the Armour Display in Room 2G, I believe she said this one's name was 'Neo'. Fetch them Yatsu, and then help Coco or Velvet out!"

"Fox, you ought to have Yatsuhashi with you. We're fighting two on two here, Velvet and I coping. And _I_ give the orders Fox, not you."

"Three against two sounds better odds to me."

"As do two against one Fox. Yatsuhashi; I'm ordering you to go and assist Fox in stopping Neo from-"

"NO! If we're all together in here we might die tonight. Stay as far away from me as you can!"

"Fox, wai-" Before the words had even finished leaving the girl's mouth, Fox's ear piece was taken out and his line went dead. "Damn it Fox!"

The copper haired boy knew it was a risky move, but at the end of the day he remembered his dream / vision more vividly than anyone else. He remembered very clearly how they all died this night if they didn't stop these people getting their hands on the Parchment. He expanded his Aura for his semblance to work and saw briefly the footsteps of the person he was following, and also the outline of them and their Aura very faintly behind a few walls as they'd already gotten a decent lead on him due to the conversation he had with his team. This was a short girl, smaller than either of his two female teammates. She was fairly nimble, but compared to Fox her speed was second rate. Also, given he had longer legs, he could close the distance very easily.

That was, if this place wasn't such a maze.

Fox opted not to decide whether the maze-like layout of this floor, or indeed the whole Museum, would play to his benefit or hers. Instead, he focussed on getting to her. He had memorised the layout fairly well, so unless things had been moved in the time between now and when he was last there he could very easily navigate his way through the floor. Plus, he knew shortcuts and secret staff entrances that this girl didn't. He let out another burst, seeing her petite figure much clearer now. He had closed the distance significantly since he first looked for it. Her Aura was most unusual; it sat perfectly still inside of her. Aura's normally express themselves much as a person or Faunus would do. This one sat unmoving inside. Also, this Aura changed hues in a consistent cycle from pink to brown then back to pink, fading through to ivory at the mid-point of every transition.

He was intrigued.

She was lost.

There were so many exhibits on this one floor that she found it hard _not_ to get lost without a map. A map she didn't have, but knew that there'd be one somewhere around here. Somewhere she'd need a map to get to in the first place. The never-ending conundrum caused the ice cream girl to grab her hair and yank ever so slightly. If she didn't love it so much, she probably would have started tearing strips out of it. But that also would have given the boy she ran past even more clues to find her. He was probably lost as well.

"Lost are we?" If she could make a noise, there probably would have been an "Eep!" as she turned round promptly, the terror causing her eyes to blink to a matching vanilla white colour. She saw the boy again. She could take him down easily, but her mind wasn't exactly in the right place at the moment. She opted instead to create an illusion and have it shatter into many pieces as her true self ran away to find her objective. But two painfully short minutes later she was greeted by the same boy once again.

"You cannot run from me. I can see your Aura, so I know where you are at all times."

' _Creepy_ ' she thought to herself.

"Fox!" A deep voice boomed over the blind student's shoulder as Yatsuhashi came around the corner into view, having disregarded Fox's insistence on him staying away and following Coco's direct order to do so. Fox tried to sound angry, but a hint of panic came across as well.

"I told you to stay away from me; I don't want anything to happen!"

"Fox, look out!" Too late; the rear end of a parasol made contact with the chest of the boy and shot him back into his tall teammate. Seeing them tangled up, Neo turned round to sprint away anywhere before her eyes spotted the sign she'd been waiting to see:

 **New Exhibit! Come see the** **Parchment of Volentes** **Today**

She ran as fast as her legs would carry her towards that sign. Fox cursed in anger, untangled himself from his partner and jumped on and over artefact after artefact to close the distance as fast as he could. She was close and he was not going to let her get that item. He jumped to a hidden door to one side of the entrance that would minimise the distance.

She entered the room and saw the stand that stored this item. It was a small hexagonal prism of gold with deep, powerful blue details engraved into its faces.

' _There it is Neo. Grab it!_ ' She picked up into a full on sprint, making a beeline for the case. She flung the closest small item to her at the case with her parasol to shatter the glass so that she could just grab the item and be on her way.

"Stop!" Fox had left his passageway and came out off to one side and a slightly shorter distance away from the item than Neo was. That said, she was already in motion. He started sprinting as well, knowing that her touch could spell doom for him and everyone else as she asks for her wish.

Her eyes darted between the inanimate object on the pedestal and the fast approaching boy on her left side.

He focussed on intercepting her before she came close to touching that thing.

When she got close enough, Neo jumped for it.

Realising there was no other choice, Fox readjusted his actions and made a jump for the Parchment of Volentes too.

Something happened that night that had never happened before.

Two people touched the artefact at the same time.

Fox and Neo felt a pain that could not be put into words. All that escaped to describe it was a roaring cry of utter agony from the blind boy. Had she been able to speak, Neo's cries would have most likely been equally as soul scaring. All ears listened to that cry. It haunted the Museum, staying far longer than it needed to. Coco and Velvet cried out Fox's name and left their battle to make their way to him. Cinder and Roman saw their opportunity and made their escape into the night. Mercury was there waiting for them with Emerald - the pair had regained enough motor control and stumbled their way out without either of their attackers noticing.

Yatsuhashi was first on the scene. He rushed over to both people on the floor, laying there motionless. He placed his two forefingers on the neck of the girl, then the neck of his teammate. He paid close attention to the chest of his teammate whilst he politely opted to merely feel for breath from the girl. As the two girls made their way into the room, the gentle giant of Team CFVY stood as they approached and opened his arms to the girls as they rushed into him. His embrace spoke the words his mouth failed to, but they were words he wished never to speak anyway. The emotional Faunus started bawling at the silent news the hug told her, their team leader joining her girlfriend in sorrow. As tears started escaping from Yatsuhashi's eyes as well, his voice mustered up the courage to speak, but not without it cracking at what was to be said.

"I'm sorry, they're dead."

* * *

Yeah... this is _so_ much more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. I mean, I knew it'd be difficult pairing them up but man, I wasn't expecting this! Honestly, killing them might be the best thing, I don't know. Also, I feel that I'm getting a little better with fight scenes, can I get outsider confirmation on that please? [Go read **Vytal Decisions** and compare ;) [shameless plug is shameless]]

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	5. The Debrief No One Wanted

The journey back to Beacon was not one they enjoyed. Not only because it was felt so long but because they were doing it one teammate down, and that was how it would always be from now on. Despite not packing very much, Fox's belongings carried far more emotional weight than they did physical. They sat there in the Bulldog, filling up the space he himself should have occupied, almost taunting the group with its presence and not his.

Yatsuhashi did not share the same side of the vehicle as the bag, opting instead to sit next to Velvet who felt like she had not stopped crying since they first entered the exhibition last night. He felt guilty not having got there faster, not being able to do anything to save him or the girl who he found dead next to him. Yatsuhashi felt he had dishonoured his friend's and teammate's legacy by not being there for him and as such remained in emotional self-exile until the situation could be resolved or at the very least handed over to someone else.

Coco's eyes were exposed for far longer than they had ever really been when she was awake and she hated it. Those were designer sunglasses, for one. But the main reason was that those pieces of reflective glass on her face would have hidden the fact that her eyes were betraying her something rotten. She was told when she was younger that she had the most expressive eyes that she'd ever seen, and that person wasn't kidding. So she hid those eyes away from everyone. And now those sunglasses were broken, until she got back to their dorm every person who cared to look at her could see the shame and sorrow in her puffy, dark brown eyes.

Much to the horror of the remainder of Team CFVY (a phrase they were going to have to get used to hearing for the next two years), there were a couple of their friends waiting for their arrival on the landing pads. Once the aircraft had touched down, neither one of the three wanted to be the first one to leave.

"What'll they all say Coco?" Velvet shuddered, tears building in the corners of her brown eyes.

"I..." she was going to attempt a coherent response fitting of a leader. "They will be supportive. And that's what they will all try to do. We will have to accept their help until we don't want it. We will..." nope, not happening anymore - though she made more progress than she thought she would. Now the act had worn off, all she could come up with were words of a broken hearted friend. "We will treasure his memory. All of us. As a team. For Fox." Yatsuhashi wrapped his arms around his teammates once again as they embraced in a small hug of their own. Once they finished, Coco made the first leap and opened the door out onto the landing pad. Once all three of them were out, the first of the unofficial welcoming party walked up to them.

"Hey guys!" the brunette chirped. "How'd it all go? Where's Fox?" Velvet cringed at that name, though not necessarily voluntarily. Silver eyes looked puzzled as the rest of her team walked up behind her. The two Faunus girls met, the younger of the two resting her hands on Velvet's shoulders.

"Velvet, what happened?" With no filter on her emotions once again, Velvet broke down and threw her arms around her feline friend. Amber eyes looked confused at the action taken, looking towards the bunny's girlfriend for some ideas on how to remove her.

"Fox is dead." Coco's head and heart hurt saying those words. The truth hurt. Eyes widened and rather than wanting to remove her anymore, Velvet felt herself getting lowered down to the ground as Blake made it easier for her study-buddy to cry to her heart's content. Yang's cool and collected demeanour was gone, leaving a scared little girl in her wake. Fox was a great inspiration to her, he was a very physical fighter and his weapons were essentially made for hand-to-hand combat, much like Ember Celica. He'd even been convinced on a couple of occasions to spar with the blonde and showed her a few techniques to help improve her prowess when up close. Now he was gone, and the fact that someone so much stronger than her could die like that hit her like a charging Boarbatusk. The girls and Yatsuhashi all shared their moment of grief before Team RWBY let the bereaved debrief in Ozpin's office.

This was not going to be fun.

Everything seemed different. Walking through the base of the tower took far longer than it normally did. The elevator seemed so much smaller and ascended the tower really slowly. Ozpin's office appeared to be no different in size, yet the three students quietly agreed that the ticking of the cogs rang far too loud for their liking.

"Good morning you three." They sat in the chairs provided for them in silence, offering only a nod as their response. "For the most part you all did extremely well on this mission, your method of planning clearly pays off very well Ms. Adel. I will admit, the information I had received regarding their plans stated that they're only be three or four of them and that may have thrown you all off a little bit."

"A little?" Coco snapped, her emotions very raw still. "Sir, we lost one of our team because of that. Fox is dead because of poor information."

"I am aware of that and I was going to get onto that subject soon, but I-"

"But nothing!"

"Coco, please don't" her girlfriend pleaded, resting a soft hand on the fashionista's own. Expressive eyes still stared at her Headmaster as she fell back in her chair, easing off the offensive.

"Which one of you three were the first to get there?"

"That would be me sir." Yatsuhashi's voice, while still very deep, was weak and fragile in comparison to how it normally sounds.

"What did you see in the exhibit when you first got there?"

"I saw Fox and the woman he was chasing laying on the floor. They were-" he was cut off by Ozpin, a gesture which irked the team leader.

"No, not them. What did you see in the _exhibit?_ What was and wasn't there?"

"Sorry. Um... the artefact's glass case was shattered and the Parchment was gone..." In saying that sentence the tank realised where the green clad man may have been heading with this; they had actually failed their mission to protect the Parchment of Volentes and they did not know where it was any more.

"Correct. I had tasked you with protecting the item; an item that has now disappeared once again. You did not capture any members of the group who attacked the place, although considering the world has not yet ended I can only assume that they did not leave with the artefact. And now you sit here having lost a teammate, having another woman's death on your shoulders and tens of thousands of Lien worth of property and historical damage, the latter of which can't be replaced, mounted against you. And until Professor Goodwitch has returned from her leave, there is no way that damage can be reversed. So, how would you rate your mission?" He was kidding, right? Coco remained silent this time, but gave it a solid three out of ten in her head. "And whilst I had promised to inform you about the artefact in more detail upon de-brief, I can see that now is not the best time to do that." He took a sip and finished the de-brief. "Very well. I expect to see you all in classes again tomorrow morning and your Mission Report on my desk by the end of the week Ms. Adel."

' _Okay, no. Say something Adel._ ' – "Sir, we have lost a teammate!"

"I am aware that is your case at the moment."

"Surely we ought to have some time to grieve and try to adjust to being a three person team. Or at least go and see him one last time at the hospital. You can't expect us to continue on as if nothing had happened!"

"No? Ms. Adel had your team performed to the much higher standard I know you are all capable of then I might have considered allowing a day or two for grieving. However, you did not. Therefore, I will not."

"That is bullshit sir!"

"A reminder Ms. Adel of who you are speaking to."

"I don't care! You can't and you won't stop us from going to see Fox! We _may_ be back in classes tomorrow but if we are I'm sure as hell not going to be happy about it." With that, Coco stormed towards the elevator. Yatsuhashi and Velvet followed suit, saying nothing. As the metal doors slid closed, the heat of the moment passed by and Coco realised her words and actions. As they neared the ground floor her breathing became heavier and tears started pooling up. Not five steps out of the elevator; she collapsed to her knees and started sobbing, her partner and teammate both there beside her to comfort her.

They made a quick stop to their dorm to drop their stuff off and pick up a few items, such as a new pair of sunglasses and a load of tissues, before they were going to head back to a landing pad and ride the next airbus towards the Vale Hospital. Outside their dorm door lay a single small bouquet and a box of chocolates with a note.

" _Stay strong. We won't tell until you're ready. Team RWBY_ "

"Those girls..." Velvet chuckled, a sound that brightened her partner's mood as well. They prepared themselves and headed back to the pads near the front of the school. By the time they'd get there, they should have roughly 45-50 minutes to be with him before they'd need to be back. Plenty of time to bid their friend a proper goodbye.

* * *

I might have something, but I'm not too sure. That's why the chapter is significantly shorter than the rest, I want to spend as much time as I can on the next one to get the story up and going - all is not lost for the story!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	6. The First-Last Time We Met

Vale Hospital was quite a spectacle. In terms of how it looked, it was almost like the architect had spent so much time in Atlas that he decided he wanted to replicate their designs in this work. The building was a sleek and pristine white, standing alone on a slight hill in the middle between Eastern and Western Vale. Inside, all the design matched the same; it was clean and it was beautiful to look at despite the fact that hospitals aren't exactly the kind of place you want to go to for admiring.

Team CFVY slowly made their way through the Visitor Entrance of the building and walked up to the desk. Sitting behind was a young male with piercing deep-sea green eyes, pale complexion and blond hair, and a much darker skinned and slightly older woman with slit apple green eyes and faint scales decorating her neck. Velvet hadn't seen a Reptile Faunus in a long while, much less a Snake one.

"Hello, welcome to the Vale Hospital. How can I help?" Despite appearances, the woman was very friendly and considerate. When Coco informed her that they were the teammates of the scarred boy who might have come in earlier today or late yesterday with a small woman, she asked one of her colleagues to escort them there whilst giving them the directions as well in case they got split up. She wished the three of them luck through a fake smile; not because that was her job, but because she knew they needed someone to be strong for them.

The staff member stopped the team in the waiting room down the hallway from where their teammates were being kept. Yatsuhashi politely informed her that only the boy was their teammate, the other was someone who was caught in the crossfire. He apologised for assuming then left to go see whether they were ready for them. As he left, a tall man entered the room they were in from the door the nurse was heading. He wore a sharp, slim-cut three piece blue suit with a deep navy - almost black - pair of brogues, an off-white shirt and a thick purple striped tie. He spotted the three of them and crossed the room to see them, his walk equal parts elegant and powerful. Coco couldn't help notice the fact he always kept his left hand grasping his left lapel as if either thing were going to fall off should he let go. He spoke with a smooth voice, but one that clearly had experience.

"Daerk DeVanta. I take it you are the teammates of the two down the hall?" Yatsuhashi repeated his previous comments to this man.

"Just the boy. The woman happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and as such suffered as well."

"I see. Well, I am scientist by trade, but an archaeologist in my spare time. I deal with objects from times long before-"

"We know what they are" Coco interrupted bluntly. The man's cornflower blue eyes shot the snappy team leader a glance as he continued.

"As I was saying, I deal with items from times long before Man and even before Grimm. And one such item I had been keen on seeing was the Parchment of Volentes and its properties. Unfortunately for me, I believe it has since been bonded to the soul of either your teammate or your not-teammate. Or both, which makes it difficult. But there may be a chance to examine the effects it had on their bodies, if only you name your price." He grabbed a blue book from his pocket with a golden trim on one edge and a pen, also with gold, from another pocket and proceeded to start scribbling. "Of course, the more time we waste, the less chance I have of finding out what the source of that mystical power is."

"Price? Mystical power? What are you on about?"

"Well, if they are dead - which they seem to be - you have no use for them. I do. And I do not have the time to explain the intricacies of the Parchment of Volentes, so I'll just say it's magic. How much?" As the two girls realised the implications behind what this man was saying, Yatsuhashi rose from his seat at a pace and closed the gap fast, grabbing the man by the collar and hauling him up into the air, his feet flapping about like a dog trying to swim. Being the 7ft tall giant he was, Daerk's head sat nicely on the ceiling of the room 3 metres above the floor.

"Fox Alistair is not some random cadaver you can pull apart. He was, and still is, my brother. I will defend him and his honour until I pass on from this world. You will not lay a finger on him, nor on the woman - she is under my protection now too. You will leave this ward and you will not return, else next time I won't be so gentle." The explosion of anger frightened many of the people present, Coco and Velvet among them. Yatsu was a calm, gentle giant. He got serious when in a fight, but never in the time they'd known him have they seen him get angry like this. But they also knew that his anger was subsiding, so decided it was best for them to not interfere.

"Okay, okay you have my word. Just, put me down." The student obliged, opening his hands. Daerk dropped to the floor with a thud. He stood, brushed himself off, straightened his tie and marched away. Once he was sure the man was gone, Yatsuhashi turned to the rest of the room.

"I apologise for my outburst. It will not happen again." With a slight bow, he sat down once again. His teammates gave him an approving look, but Coco's mind shifted slightly upon recalling his words.

"Both of them?" The tank nodded.

"She must have been a Huntress as well. Even if her motives were skewed, she had at some point trained to protect us all. We owe it to her to grant her the respect a Huntress deserves so that her spirit may be at peace, even if her actions in our world were unruly." Coco let out a small giggle and lightly punched his arm.

"Ever the philosopher, eh Yatsu?" The man smiled at his friend and leader, happy at the fact she had looked past his outburst and saw the emotion behind it.

* * *

Team CFVY were called to the room that Fox was in by the nurse that walked them here. Emotions greyed as they walked through the doorway and saw him.

Nothing about him had changed.

He still remained motionless.

Still not breathing.

Still dead.

"He's not dead." All three students looked towards the source of that voice. The doctor, a larger lady with pink hair, spoke again. "Given all the signs and symptoms - nothing's virtually across the board - he _is_ dead. But it seems his brain refuses to go." The small Faunus girl looked at her teammate on the bed in equal parts wonder and pain. By technicality alone Fox wasn't dead. But 'technically not dead' wasn't enough for her. He was either alive or dead, and she didn't want there to be a third option. The gunner, who was much less versed in the intricate details of the medicinal world than her girlfriend and tank of a teammate, needed some clarification on the whole scenario.

"Sorry, how can his brain stay alive when he's got no pulse?"

"Honestly Miss, I'm asking myself that question as well." She took out a few x-rays and photographs from the clipboard hanging off the end of Fox's bed and handed them to the team. "You see on those images?" The image she was pointing to showed a large mass of colour in the scan of Fox's brain. "And compared to the scan of someone else who is braindead," this image showed next to no colour at all, "my only explanation is that he is not braindead. Neither is the girl, she is showing the exact same readings for everything we do. The fact that their brains can both survive with zero oxygen is simply amazing."

"So, is he in some sort of coma? Can he hear us?" The doctor scratched the back of her head in uncertainty at the Faunus' question.

"I couldn't tell you. No one could; this has never happened before. Your guess is as good as mine. Which reminds me unfortunately, whilst you're here..." they stared at her, everyone dreading the words that were going to escape her mouth. "...we're fairly certain that the pair of them would remain in this state indefinitely. There's been absolutely no fluctuation in their brain activity since we've had them hooked up to the monitors and that is likely to remain the same. We wanted to get your verdict on whether or not we should pull the plug on them or not..."

"What?! How can you...?"

"I know it's not exactly what anyone wants to hear. After all, he is your teammate. But knowing that this would be his way of living for what we can only assume to be an eternity wouldn't you think it merciful to end their suffering sooner rather than later? I'd hate to think what it's like to be trapped inside your own body; unable to move but still aware of everything. All this machine is doing is keeping his brain activity level." There was silence in the room, save for the quiet, constant beep that Velvet heard on the heart monitor indicating that there was no pulse. They turned the volume on it right down so that they could work around him in peace and not be driven insane by a constant mid/high pitched noise droning in their ears. The Faunus spoke first.

"Turn it off."

"Velvet! What are you saying?"

"I'm saying 'Turn it off', Coco. I don't want him to suffer - he's done enough of that in his life. Remember his nightmares - what was the name he gave to the monster?" The emotional stress the rabbit was going through didn't just bring forward the scared emotions, but also it seems her more aggressive ones as well.

"He called it The Nothing."

"And what did he describe The Nothing to be like?"

"A..." Coco connected the dots and saw Velvet's reasoning behind her words. She complied, finishing the answer. "A void that consumed everything that he held close to him." The beret wearing girl removed her sunglasses, revealing her teary brown eyes to her team and the doctor. "I'm with Velvet. I don't want him to suffer any more."

"I, too, am in agreement with this."

"Very well guys. And what about the girl? She with you?"

"She was not, no. But ridding one of this torture and not the other would not sit right on my soul. I vote that we do the same with Neo."

"Agreed", replied their leader as the Faunus nodded, giving her approval.

"Sure thing. I'll give you some time to say anything you want to say." With that, the doctor left the room, leaving only Team CFVY together once more. No one spoke once more, the only sounds once again being a monotonous beeping and the occasional sniffle from someone trying to keep their emotions in check.

Yatsuhashi spoke first, kneeling down beside his partner. "I wish that I could have been there for you at the end Fox. I honestly believe this may not have happened were I faster or stronger. But I must not dwell on the past, for it has happened. I must move on, as must we all. But never will we forget you." He rested his left hand over Fox's heart and his right over his own. "Until we meet again, brother _._ " A tear fell from his eyes as he stood up and let Velvet come closer to the boy.

"Hey Fox. Listen, I always looked up to you as a brother. You and I were so alike, yet couldn't be more different - we had both been discriminated against for things that were beyond our control and yet we fought through it all and came out stronger on the other side every time. I'm going to keep doing that for you, keep fighting. I'm going to miss you Fox. I am!" She pulled herself away and jumped to Yatsuhashi as the tears began to flow once more. Their team leader sat down on the bed facing the boy.

"..." No words passed her lips, no matter how hard she tried. Every time she exhaled, she felt the emotions start to build inside. And she let them. She remained in silence until there were tears running down her face and her emotions were high before she spoke, hoping that the moment would find the words her brain couldn't. "I'm sorry Fox!" She darted down to hug the boy, arms wrapped around his neck and her head resting in the crook of his shoulder. "I am so sorry for what I said. The last thing I did was I shouted at you and that was wrong and I want to take it back. Damn it, I would take it all back! I wouldn't even dream of going on this mission knowing that I'd lose you at the end. I don't know what to do Fox! I'm down a teammate and I'll always think you're there or you've got hurt and that'll just send me into a fritz and..." she removed her head from his shoulder to look at his face. "...and I can't do that again, and risk losing another one of you." She moved his hair out of the way, leaned in and placed a long, hard kiss on the scarred forehead of the boy. "Goodbye." And then Coco left the room sobbing. Velvet followed to make sure that she didn't do something irrational in grief. Yatsuhashi exited that room and entered the one next door.

Neo lay there in the exact same position as Fox. With the exact same predicament. They were mirror images of one another in that regard. He looked at the medical reports on the end of the bed to confirm his suspicions. Identical, except she also had Differing Aura Glow Syndrome [DAG Syndrome], a very rare but nonfatal disorder; he'd only heard of one other case in his lifetime from Atlas many years ago. Yatsuhashi put the documents back then once again went to kneel down next to the bed as he did with Fox, only this time he stopped. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed much like Coco did. There was nothing he could think of to say, so he just started speaking.

"I do not know you, Neo. I know nothing of your past. I have never seen nor heard of you before yesterday. The only things I know are that Fox told me your name was Neo, and that you are as good as dead. And yet your mind still fights on, just as Fox's does." He shifted his weight to look more at the girl he was speaking to. "You are strong, much like Fox is. And I cannot begin to imagine what it is like inside your head right now, but know that I have sworn to myself that I would protect you from harm. Someone wanted to buy your body and cut it open to see what effect touching that artefact did to you and Fox. I will not let that happen. You are a stranger to me, but you deserve to be remembered like a Huntress. You and Fox shall be buried next to one another, so that your souls may live on together in the next world as you died in this." Yatsuhashi felt another tear falling down his cheek. He wiped it away and rose from the bed. With one last look, he left the room and waited outside for the doctors to return.

"It's going to be fine Coco." Velvet tried reassuring her partner countless times, but the emotions kept coming even when she herself wanted them to stop. "We are going to manage." Yatsuhashi entered the little secluded room with them, shutting the door and sealing them off from the world. He eased his way down on to both of his knees and extended his arms open for the two girls to hug him. Coco jumped at him, almost knocking him over. Velvet just listened outside; her acute hearing coming in handy.

There was nothing out of the ordinary, until she heard two plugs being pulled. That was it; Fox and Neo were unplugged and would most likely be dead within the next few minutes. She shuffled in and joined the hug of her two teammates. But she broke it off very quickly as a sound caught her ear.

"Velvet," her girlfriend asked through sniffles, "what are you...?"

"Shh!" the rabbit Faunus ordered. There was nothing for another while, but when that sound returned again she gasped. Hearing a second one joining it sent her emotions everywhere and fled the room.

The sounds she heard?

* * *

Y'all just gonna have to wait until next week to find out. Ain't I a tease? Next week's chapter may be short as well, but that's just so I can focus on the chapters following (yes, chapter_ **s** , plural. I've got the story planned out a little further in advance than normal, so there are definitely more chapters in the works.)

Fun Fact! During the planning stages of the chapter, I didn't have a name for Daerk, so his placeholder name was "{ **ARSEHOLE McDOUCHEBAG** }"

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	7. Just Like That, Everything Changes

_Beep, beep_

Velvet ran as fast as her Faunus legs would take her, weaving in and out of staff and patients and visitors to get there.

 _Beep, beep_

She wasn't mistaking, that was definitely the sound she was hearing. And they were most definitely coming from the two rooms.

 _Beep, beep, beep, beep_

They were alive. Fox and Neo were alive!

She got to the door and stared into the room to see Fox's heartrate being measured on the screen beside him. There was a nice, healthy pulse beating away. Before she even thought about going in to see him her feet took her out of that doorway and into the next. The exact same scenario, Neo was sitting upright staring around at everything in bewilderment, her pulse initially at the same bpm as Fox's was. When she saw Velvet however, her eyes - which the Faunus had to admit were the most beautiful case of Heterochromia she'd ever seen - blinked to a pale white and she tried to flee from her bed, her manic behaviour making her heartrate rise at an alarming pace to nearly 170% of what it was when Velvet first saw it. The rabbit girl just held her hands up and slowly walked towards the bed.

"Whoa, take it easy Neo." The girl quit her thrashing and focussed on the girl advancing. "Your name is Neo, right?" An eyebrow was raised at this new girl.

' _How does she know my name? I've never told anyone my name._ '

"My name is Velvet. I'm a friend, just here to help."

' _Friend?_ ' Neo cocked her head to one side at that, a sign to Velvet that she was listening and understanding her. Her eyes changed back to their one brown, one pink as the girl sat on the side of her bed.

"What can you tell me about what you felt?"

' _I can't._ ' She pointed to her mouth, then "zipped it shut" - Universal Sign for "I can't speak"

"I need to know Neo. So that me and my team can help you."

' _No. No I physically can't speak!_ ' She tried again, being extra careful to make sure her signs were coming across correctly.

"Please Neo. Just talk to me."

' _Oh for Oum's sake._ ' She looked around the room and spied the TV Remote as well as some paper she hoped would be spare. If not, oops. She pointed at them, then at herself.

"Do you want me to get those for you?"

' _Finally, some progress._ ' She nodded with a smile. Velvet obliged, grabbing the remote and the paper and also finding a pen for Neo to write with. Once she had been given all of those things, she tried one last time to give Velvet the hint she needed to figure out her condition.

First she pointed at herself. Then she pointed at the large 'Mute' button on the remote, then once again back at herself.

"Oh Dust, I'm sorry!" she cried, a little embarrassed at how long that took her to figure out. Neo just shrugged.

' _Hey, at least you got there in the end._ ' She started scribbling words down for Velvet to read; a much easier and sure fire way for her message to get across.

'What happened to the other guy? Where is he?'

"Fox? Oh Fox!" Velvet stood up quickly and nearly ran out of the room before realising that it would be really rude to do so. "Come on, I'll show you. He's just next door." _Then_ she ran out of the room. Neo shrugged to herself, detached herself from the mass of electrical equipment and slowly shuffled her way out the door and round the corner. The hospital gown was not helping her realisation that it was really cold in here. She edged her way around the corner to see four students hugging and crying happy tears. Oum that must be a nice feeling.

"Guys, this is Neo. She's mute. Neo, meet Yatsuhashi and Coco. Fox you've already had a run in with." The two students greeted the short woman whilst the bedbound boy just looked directly in her general direction. His milky white eyes stared directly at her blankly. She felt really uncomfortable about it all.

' _Please stop staring at me Fox. I don't like it._ '

"Sorry, I can't help it sometimes." He turned his head away from her and towards Velvet. Neo's eyes widened. "I thought you said she was mute."

' _I am mute._ '

"Then why can I hear you?"

"Fox, who are you talking to?"

"I'm talking to Neo, Yatsu. Can't you hear?"

' _No, they can't._ '

"No, we can't."

Everyone looked around at one another in confusion. Until everyone's thoughts lined up in perfect unison:

" **What?** "

* * *

I know this chapter is short. Like, really short. Like, 'Not-exactly-shorter-than-my-shortest-One-Shot-but-getting-pretty-darn-close' short, and for that I'm sorry. But I think that me trying to add anything else to this would be like me finishing this joke and then starting the next one all in the same chapter; I honestly feel like adding anything else ruins the impact of the scene and loses the significance of this chapter.

Silver lining, I'm working on the next ones as we speak, so I'm trying to get ahead of the curve a lot more with this.

I also wanted to mix up chapter lengths a bit more, shoot me (please don't).

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	8. Readjusting

Whilst she doubted it would be much of a shock to the four of them, Neo left the very first chance she had. There was no way on Remnant she was going to stay in a room with a man who could hear her thoughts, especially one she thought was kind of cute...

' _Shut up, shut up, shut up!_ ' The girl hit her head multiple times in an effort to knock the words out of her head like they were physical entities. ' _You're being ridiculous. You need to find the rest of them and stay out of it all for a while until you get a handle on what's going on._ ' She walked briskly along the streets of Vale, being careful not to stay on the same path for too long. She never felt safe anymore. Even with the people she once considered "friends" were now nothing more than a constant reminder of how lonely and vulnerable she felt.

As the abandoned warehouse they often frequented approached, the woman felt a strange unease wash over her.

' _Why are you stopping? These were people we can trust, why would... you..._ ' Her thoughts ground to a slow and painful halt as she began hearing Roman and Cinder's voices, along with two other pairs of footsteps following that were most likely Mercury and Emerald. In a panic, Neo hid behind one of the large dumpsters she knew they wouldn't check behind.

"...it's a good thing, right?" Roman finished.

"Well of course it is. I honestly have no idea why you even brought her along in the first place."

"Well, Neo didn't exactly give me a choice." Dual coloured eyes widened as she listened more intently. What were they saying about her? "I mean, the imp started following me one day and stuck there like a shadow or a bad smell. She showed some skill when there were a couple of idiots who tried to attack her so I thought she may be of use to us. At first, yeah. But by the end she was-"

"A nuisance" Mercury jumped in.

"Reckless and irresponsible" added Emerald.

"A liability." As Cinder rounded of the list, Neo's heart sunk. She'd always thought these were people who she could be with and have some fun with, but they clearly thought otherwise.

"Really, I'm _glad_ that she's dead." Had she had the ability to do so, the ice cream girl would have gasped. There were no objections from the remaining three people there.

' _They would rather have me dead then have me there. They're not friends at all._ ' Tears welled up in her eyes as she got up and ran as fast and as hard as she could away from this horrible place and these horrible people. As the four of them were entering the warehouse, Mercury turned to see the petite girl running away with her head in her hands, clearly crying. Her pain at his words brought him joy; he smirked an evil and knowing smirk, then joined his friends inside.

* * *

There were very clearly some wild emotions flying about when Fox showed up at Beacon late that evening. Team RWBY felt like the sympathy they showed the more senior students earlier was for nothing and they were understandably annoyed, especially Ruby.

"What are you even trying to imply Ruby?" Coco asked, frustrated at the small girl's lack of structure in everything she had tried to convey over the last five minutes.

"What do you think?!"

"I don't know; that's why I'm asking."

"You told us Fox was dead! Was this a way to pull on my team's heartstrings? Because I'm the only one who is allowed to do that sort of thing to Weiss!"

"RUBY!"

"Shush. Let me finish." The white haired girl sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as her partner continued, Yang elbowing her smaller teammate and smiling at her in a cheeky and crafty way letting another, much louder sigh escape from the girl. The blonde had long since passed caring about the original topic of conversation and instead focussing on the hilarity that was not only her sister trying to be imposing, but also the unintentional slip of her feelings for Weiss and the girl's response indicating her feelings returned. She was going to have a long conversation with them later about that. "Why did you say he was dead?"

"Because Ruby," the boy in question stepped forward as he continued "in their eyes, I was. Yatsuhashi felt no pulse and saw no breathing. If one of your team were laying motionless on the floor not breathing and without a pulse, what would you think? Besides, it was only after they got me to the Hospital that the doctors realised that my brain was still functioning after all, so they hooked me up to machines to keep me stable and monitor me. Then my team turned up and voted to switch the machines off. My brain did slowly give up stop, but then it started again the instant I was teetering on the edge of mortality. And now I am back."

"Yeah but... how... but..." Fox had explained everything so well that Ruby didn't have a counter argument any more. Which sucked, because she still had pent up anger to let loose on someone or something.

"It is okay Ruby; your team's sentiments were just. I also understand your frustration; but I truly did believe my partner to be dead when we first arrived back at Beacon. I wish not to quarrel with you or your team on the matter anymore. Perhaps, if my leader agrees to this, we can repay you in some way for misleading your feelings."

"Yeah, I'm with Yatsu on that one. We will be happy to do something for you as recompense for this." Ruby's face lit up slightly at the sentiment, her anger fading away to be unleashed on some other poor soul in the future.

"Okay, I'm fine with that." She turned away to leave with her team. She didn't apologise for the outburst, but Coco deemed it justified and could let it slide. As the first year team walked off, Yang walked between her two smaller teammates and threw an arm around each of their shoulders.

"You two have got a lot of explaining to do when we get back to the dorm." The anger started bubbling up again inside Ruby and Weiss simple brought her arms across her stomach to close herself off from everyone.

Team CFVY made their way back to their own dorm as well.

"I'm going to be perfectly honest guys, the next few nights may be a bit rough" he said, closing the dorm door behind them. "I mean, I feel great at the moment but I have no idea if this peace'll last."

"Fox, it's fine. Take your time to readjust. Spend the next few days away from classes if you need to - just take your time."

"Cheers Yatsu." Fox went to go lay on his bed before he turned to the rest of his team. "By the way, I heard everything."

"What do you mean?" Velvet queried, her nerves picking up ever so slightly. The messy haired boy just grinned.

"Let's just say something that you'll all understand; I forgive you, and I view you in the same way, _ani_." The Faunus and the boy's partner went over to the bed and initiated the team hug. Coco removed her sunglasses first and wiped away the tear that fell before she joined them.

"Damn it Fox, you keep this up and I won't have any tears left to cry." The brown coloured quartet all laughed together, a sound that brought all of their uneasy minds to a state of peace that they could live with for now.

* * *

So, I felt like a bit of a dick only giving you a 940 word chapter after a week's wait... I relented to the ever-building guilt inside of me and finished next week's chapter _way_ ahead of schedule and here it is for you **_today!_** Honestly I think that these two chapters could, and really _should,_ be considered sister chapters - two halves of a whole. I know what some of you are thinking:

 _Feugo, why didn't you upload both parts at the same time?_

Answer's plain and simple: I believe the impact of their revelation needed to be its own thing, rather than drowned in the middle of a chapter. I also didn't want to pad out the dialogue between characters to filibustering levels, speaking unnecessarily to pad the time before the inevitable conclusion comes. That's not like me (at least, I hope it's not like me)

Also; my story. _I_ wanted to write a short chapter with a lot of impact, so I did. But ultimately, I'm too nice of a person with a fair amount of compassion and forgiveness in his heart, and I listen to people - that's why reviews are so important to writers guys. Two reviews, both voicing the same opinion. Clearly, y'all aren't happy with shorter chapters, so I will try to avoid them in the future - no promises though.

Back to normal next week

And there's no better time than to say this, as I always do:  
As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	9. Cliffhanger

The next day, Fox took his partner's advice and stayed away from all classes that the rest of his team had. Coco wanted to join Fox, but Velvet and Yatsuhashi reminded her that she didn't come back from the dead yesterday. She reluctantly agreed, but also told the team that everyone gets that luxury if that happens to them. He spent the first few hours of the day resting - between the time he touched the Parchment and when he became conscious again, his brain was constantly working and as such it felt like it was never truly asleep - and after that he set out to go relax in the park once more. The weather today was not as nice as it was before he died, but it was still pleasant enough to warrant him staying there. His mind focussed on nothing in particular; if he wanted to listen to water flowing in and around the pond he would, if he'd rather pay attention to the birds flying overhead he could. He could take in the breeze flowing through the leaves of the tree he sat under, or the light footsteps approaching him, or the...

' _Great, who is it this time?_ ' "Hey, if you want to..." before he even had a chance to continue the feet started hitting the ground much heavier and faster than earlier, clearly running away from his position. The boy took a whiff of the air to see if he could tell who it was from their scent as he didn't really feel like using his semblance to see. Vanilla. Not much else to go on really. He just shrugged and went back to relaxing.

The rest of the day and the following day consisted mostly of the same thing, although less sleeping, less relaxing and slightly more training, plus note taking nearer the end of the day. There also seemed to be that smell of vanilla every once in a while when he was outside of Beacon, but by the time he'd reacted and activated his semblance long enough to see its source the culprit and the main bulk of the scent scattered.

The third and final day he was going to be off before re-joining his team in classes he travelled out to an old training ground of his. The Cliffside was far beyond the Emerald Forest. It was precarious going there due to the high concentration of Nevermores that nested by the cliffs, the eroding battleground and, his favourite, rockslides. But that is truly why enjoyed going there; the uncertainty of the landscape meant he had to focus extra hard on his surroundings so that he didn't end up crushed by falling rocks. Three times is two times too many - he didn't know about them the first time so he always let himself off with that one. His first port of call was always sitting down in the middle of his training grounds and quickly getting a feel of the land, and this time was no exception. Only when he wandered to the spot he normally used to sit and feel out the land, the ground crumbled underneath him and Fox struggled ever so slightly to stop himself from falling off the newly moved cliff face 80m to his death.

"Guess the weather finely got to you, eh?" His training ground used to be about 50m from the smaller cliff face and entrance to his safe-ish space behind him to the definitely not safe drop to impending death that was the edge. Now, after a fairly lengthy and powerful storm Vale was hit with a fortnight before, the main cliff seemed to have crumbled away and left only 35m between the back wall and deadly fall. Still plenty of space.

After a gruelling thirty minutes of intense workout by Fox to get his stamina and reflexes up to a similar level they were at a week ago, the pained cry of a Nevermore rang through his ears. A Nevermore Alpha, at that. He normally would ignore the grunts and roars of any type of Grimm unless it was right near him; the small archways that separated his own private cliff ledge and the treeline of the Emerald Forest could generally only fit a Boarbatusk or a younger Beowolf and nothing bigger though not many of them have had the sense to climb up the rocks on their side over the top and drop down on him, but hey - Grimm aren't known for having the most tactical of minds. This time however, he felt like he needed to focus on this one. He hadn't heard it swooping past him at all before, maybe due to his mind being so focussed on one thing he'd zoned out on everything else.

' _Didn't you learn your lesson Fox?_ ' he berated himself on the fact. ' _Don't lose focus on the larger picture._ ' But now, he burst his Aura out to better use his semblance. He used the sphere like radar and tried to hone in on any spots of flying darkness. He found the one he was looking for and...

"Oh shit!" His blank eyes widened in horror as he jumped out of the way, narrowly missing the slowly eroding carcass of the now-deceased flying Grimm crashing into the cliff behind him. Despite being dead, the body still made enough of an impact to cause an impromptu rockslide. Fox used the opportunity to make his way out. He dodged the first smaller rocks and fast moving pebbles that fell on him, then shifted his attention to the larger boulders that would inevitably start falling. The first three came down heavy, one being flung out much further away from the cliff than the others.

Great, a challenge.

Fox leapt onto the side of lowest one, then sprung to the one that was next to it. From that, he back flipped onto the furthest boulder before shooting himself almost directly upwards. The remaining six giant boulders that fell on his assent of the cliff made great moving stepping stones for the student, working on both his quicker, more instinctive decisions rather than pre-planned ones and to highlight the threat of making a huge mistake and plummeting to your doom or being crushed by rock. He admitted, he wasn't expecting those things to always be present at all times during his life, but it worked in the moment. As he landed on the top cliff face, rolling forward to lessen the impact on his legs even more than just letting his Aura soak the damage, Fox's ears heard a new sound for him. It wasn't a natural sound, nor was it mechanical. No it sounded like... rustling? His head looked up as he followed the sound roughly back to its source. After a minute, the sound reached his level and stopped, followed by three short footsteps to slow their movement to a halt and a decent smell of...

"Vanilla. So you've been following me the past couple of days?" Neo grinned at the boy, closing the parasol she so graciously floated down to the ground with.

' _Of course it's me. We needed to talk._ ' She tested the water with that question, hoping he'd give a decent answer.

"Why?" Her grin dropped slightly; that was very generic and could have been a continuation of his own question. She needed a question that would give a really weird answer so that she knew he could hear her, the one she'd been using on everybody she dared to get close to in the past few days.

' _What question did I ask people again?_ '

"I'm not sure. Why were you asking other people?"

' _It was so I can get them to answer very specifically so that I knew I wasn't going... oh... so you definitely can hear me then?_ '

"Yeah. Wait, Neo?"

' _Surprise, I guess..._ '

"So, you are completely mute right. I'm not just some special case where you are just talking to me and not everyone else."

' _Fox, you were there at the Hospital and know that's not the case - no one else could hear my thoughts but you._ '

"Hold on; your _thoughts?_ "

' _Uh huh. In comparison to ever other sound you hear, how does my voice sound?_ '

"I dunno. Sounds a little bit echo-y. Like you're actually inside my head."

' _Maybe because we are._ ' Fox's eyebrows arched at the statement as he attempted to walk towards her. ' _No, no. I'll come to you - the rock's not exactly the most stable over here._ '

"Well, that might be because of the Nevermore Alpha you send crashing into the cliff."

' _Sorry. I wanted to get your attention._ '

"And you couldn't have done that in a _normal_ way? Why didn't you just call my name to get my attention?" Neo placed her hands on her hips as the boy realised his mistake. "Sorry."

' _It's fine, your bunny rabbit forgot as well._ ' The woman walked towards the boy and something happened that neither of them expected right as she reached where he stood. They felt... complete. Like the pair of them being apart from one another was suddenly the worst thing that ever happened to them, despite the fact they've known of each other for five days now. Neo threw her parasol down and suddenly tackled Fox in a passionate embrace that knocked him to the floor and brought her down with him.

This felt right, their bodies connected in this intimate moment. Their lips met and in that moment there was absolutely nowhere either would rather be - a glorious, cloudless Mid-Spring day on a Vale clifftop passionately making out with the person they felt complete with. Neo's arms wrapped around the taller boy's chest and under his arms, her hands rubbing against the scars on his back - the uneven skin feeling so inviting to her. Fox's arms hugged Neo's shoulders and one cupped the back of her head in the heat of passion bringing her closer to him. The intensity rose as the time progressed, lips parting so that tongues could meet as well, her hands moving ever closer to areas that no one else had ever touched before.

And just as suddenly as the impulses came, they vanished. Both party's eyes opened in horror at the scene that greeted them and they screamed - one externally and the other internally but both still loud in their ears - as they flew apart from one another as fast as their bodies would allow them.

"What the hell was that about?" Fox cried.

' _You think I know?_ ' Neo thought, her confusion evident in the voice she had inside her head that Fox could hear. ' _I don't know what happened any more than you do._ '

" _That's_ your excuse? You threw yourself on top of me, started making out with me and you expect saying 'I don't know' is going to fool me?"

' _I'm sorry, but you were making out with me pretty heavily too! That was a two sided thing there, Fox!_ ' Her thoughts were manifesting in mental shouts that the boy could very clearly hear.

"If that was your reason for coming out here, then you are a sick and twisted little woman!" And Fox turned to leave, lowering his stance to run off.

' _Fox, no! That wasn't the reason I-_ '

"Well whatever it was, you blew your chance to say it! Stay away from me!" Fox pushed off hard with his right foot, took three powerful steps and flung himself into the nearest treetop, hopping from one to the other at breakneck speeds to get as far away from the cliff as fast as he could.

Neo fell to her knees, on the brink of defeat. She'd lost those she'd deemed her friends earlier this week and now something happened that had destroyed any chance of making new ones. The duel haired woman slammed her hands on the ground multiple times in sheer rage, cracking the rocks underneath the grass due to the immense forces rapidly applied on those two particular areas in the last few seconds. Tears streamed from her eyes of pink and brown. If she could do so, she would have screamed. Doing what she was doing was likely to attract Grimm to here anyway, so there wasn't much point of hiding her feelings. She found strength to lift herself off the ground and walk to her parasol. She picked it up and looked at it, then unsheathed the blade and drove it down into the rocks. Finally, she walked straight to the edge of the cliff. The rocks made uncomfortable noises; noises that most people would turn away from for fear that the ground underneath would give way. Neo was done, so she hoped that would be the case. She shuffled forward so that the tips of her boots hovered over the edge, her centre of balance sitting right behind the edge. As one final tear escaped from her eyes, she shut them and leaned. Once the deed was past the point of no return, her eyes opened and she gasped despite the fact no sound accompanied it, and fell.

* * *

 **{END OF PART 1}**

* * *

This has been so much fun writing, I cannot even begin to describe it. I really enjoyed fleshing them out in these first nine chapters, it helps make them feel a lot more real than stories before because we've spent a lot of time with them first _before_ their inevitable hooking up later down the line (spoilers, if the tags for the story weren't enough of a hint)

Y'all might notice something different at the start of the next chapter, just keep an eye out for it.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	10. Bedroom Thoughts-less

**KEY:** **  
**

"Normal speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thoughts_ '  
 **# - 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta: EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

The next week and a half went by with very little drama. Fox started lessons back up again, having caught up on all of the work he'd missed while he was taking time to recover from death. Yatsuhashi mentioned he met someone really interesting a couple of days ago and has been hanging around with them a lot recently.

"So Yatsu."

"Yes Fox?"

"When am I gonna meet the girlfriend?"

"That is not what we are Fox. They are just a friend." Fox rolled his milky white eyes.

"Suurree." ' _I wish you wouldn't lie to me Yatsu, you hang around with them more than me and I can smell the perfume she wears on you._ ' Fox played along, because why not? If his friend was happy, he was happy for him.

 **~000~**

Week three of being reborn and things were basically normal once again. Fox felt Yatsuhashi around a lot more recently this week; things obviously didn't work between the two of them. But Velvet was acting really weird recently. It started not soon after Yatsuhashi stopped seeing his new "friend".

"Hey, Fox?"

"What's up Velvet?"

"Would it be okay if I bring a study-buddy in here to work?"

"Why don't you use the library? It's where you go every other time you want to study; and isn't Blake your 'study-buddy' normally? Some trouble in paradise?"

"Oh hush Fox. A lot of the first year teams are off doing missions and things, Team RWBY being one of them."

' _All the more reason to go there then._ ' "Sure, I don't mind. Just no kissing them." Fox winked in the general direction of the pair then proceeded to resume his book. Written in braille, of course. Unbeknownst to him, Velvet's study buddy blushed really quite hard at his comment and wink. But they said nothing.

 **~000~**

A month after Velvet's new study-buddy showed up and there was silence in Team CFVY's dorm.

And not even silence because it was empty. Silence because no one was saying anything despite them all four members of Team CFVY, plus Velvet's & Coco's study-buddy (whose name is Cherry, apparently) were in the room. Five people in a single room and the only noise that was being made was whenever Fox turned the page. He felt the first six words on the page, and then caved in.

"Alright, I can't take it anymore." He slammed the book hard, causing Velvet and her study-buddy to jump. "Why is everyone so quiet around me all of a sudden? What's up with that? Someone, please explain."

"Fox... what happened with you and Neo, the day before you started classes up again?" Fox tensed at the name, he hadn't heard it being mentioned in ages ever since that incident.

"Two months ago Neo followed me out to where I used to train on the Cliffside, she hurled a Nevermore Alpha at me, then tried to make out with me so I ran away and haven't brought that up ever since." There was another long silence, but Coco answered in a rather odd way.

"Cherry wonders why you can't just speak with this Neo sort things out with her. As do I actually."

"Because that whole scenario was incredibly awkward for me and I'm not prepared to speak with her. Were I prepared to speak, I'd go to where she is and speak - but I don't know where she is so I can't even if I wanted to."

Silence. "Cherry wants to know if you've even asked anyone about where she is."

"No I haven't, Cherry. But tell me this, Cherry: what are you studying?"

"We're studying-"

"No, not you Coco. Or you Yatsu, or Velvet. Cherry." Silence. Fox could slightly make out the sounds of panicked flapping of arms from around the room, but instead remained focussed on his own question. "Cherry, your answer."

"Fox she can't speak." Scarred hands clenched into tight fists as he looked at the girl.

"5 weeks you've been in here. Why didn't you just say something to me? In here?" He heard the starts of hand movements from her position, signing her response to those who could see her before an all too familiar sound started ringing inside his head and spoke the words her hands made.

' _Because you hurt me too._ ' He lowered his head, then spoke again to Neo.

"So what have you been doing in here?" Velvet replied instantly, something that startled the boy slightly as he had grown a little accustomed to having brief-to-uncomfortable pauses between the end of his sentence and the start of someone else's.

"We've been helping Neo. The first couple of weeks Yatsu had been helping her meditate."

"Neo explained to me in great detail about how the artefact could work - her boss collected a large amount of information on the item, more than we ever got provided with - and she mentioned what happened at the cliffs. She wanted to learn to purge her mind of those thoughts and hide herself from yours, so I taught her how to do that in just under a couple of weeks. I also taught her how to hide her Aura at her request as well."

"And during that time, Yatsu explained how challenging it was to communicate with someone when a conversation is so one sided. So he and I told her that we would like to be taught how to Sign, so that we could have a proper conversation with one another."

"I found out soon after, and I wanted to learn as well."

"She was lonely Fox. She wanted companionship, and we gave it to her." There was a pause as Neo was obviously signing something to the rest of them. "And she says she has never been happier in her life. But she wanted you to be there as well; only problem being the whole cliff thing may not have been a one-time thing. So using Yatsu's meditation techniques, we've been learning Sign Language in as close a proximity as Neo wanted to you so that she could be around you and not have any other... incidents."

"Okay." The blind boy raised his head and faced the mute girl in question. "But why couldn't _you_ tell me all of this now?" She didn't respond. Coco did.

"She was unwilling to run the risks. She'd much rather stay out of your head completely unless she _needs_ to."

"Okay." He seemed to have forgiven her for what transpired last time they were knowingly in each other's presence, yet he still felt a tad uneasy at their being this close to the other. "So how long will that be for, if you're her friends now?"

"Actually, she mentioned once that you and she need to go and see Ozpin as soon as she was ready. She seems to think that he was withholding information from us during briefing and at the de-brief that could explain the minute details of how this works - and I think she is." Neo smiled at the fashionista, her way of saying that she is. The boy nodded his head, realising what that would intel but willing to do it if it meant figuring out how to stop it then he'd take the risk. He opened up his Scroll and rang up the Headmaster.

"Good afternoon Mr. Alistair. I trust you are doing well."

"Yes sir, I am. Thank you. I was wondering if I could come and speak with you today? As late as possible."

"Of course. I've been meaning to speak with you for some time now, but I felt that my initiating the conversation would be unjust given the circumstances. I shall see you at 5:40pm."

"Thank you sir." He ended the call, then turned to leave. "If you'll forgive me, I'd much rather go read in the library. I'll see you at the Tower at 5:40pm Neo." After he had left, Neo started signing to her friends.

" _Is he always like that when he's upset?_ "

" _Not always,_ " replied Yatsuhashi, " _but he has a tendency to be a little irrational._ "

" _I see..._ " The woman looked at the door once again, and for the first time since she walked in the room little over a month ago she let a thought pass through her mind. ' _'cause he's kind of cute when he's irritated._ '

* * *

Fox waited around for as long as he could before he started heading towards Beacon's Tower. His mind was still all over the place and he really did not want to be in the same place at the same time with Neo alone for any longer than he needed to. As he approached the Tower he felt Coco's presence already waiting there, along with Neo's again. She wasn't hiding her Aura anymore; she didn't need to. Fox approached in silence and walked past the two girls, going straight inside. Coco and Neo shared a concerned glance then hugged one another.

" _Good luck in_ _there_ ," Coco signed. " _Hope you get the answers you need_."

" _Thank you Coco._ " The woman hurried in after the boy, who was already halfway through the Tower before she had even entered. By the time she'd caught up with him, he had pressed the elevator button and was waiting for the doors to open. As she got right next to him, an impulsive thought started growing inside her head. She panicked and clenched her eyes tight, focussing on Yatsuhashi's training.

' _Calm your body. Clear your mind. Purge the thoughts._ ' Those three small phrases kept being repeated over and over, each repetition feeling more desperate than the last as the original thought gained more power behind it. Eventually as the doors opened and she walked inside, the thought was being subdued. She pressed the button for the top floor with an exhale of breath. The doors closed and she'd realised her victory. She had won out; she was in control of her thoughts and he-

Fox threw his body at Neo, pressing his scarred lips against her own and pushing her against one of the walls of the small metal room, her back hitting a couple of the buttons. At first she was overcome with panic, but with that small lapse in her concentration the thought fired its way to the forefront of her mind and she let it control her actions and feelings now. She closed her eyes and returned the passion, her hand wrapping around the strong boy's waist. Fox's hand braced against the wall, hitting another couple of buttons as it did so. With each second, the heat inside the enclosed space rose faster than the elevator itself. Were there people outside its doors every time it slowed down and reached a new floor, they would have seen a couple of people in the heat of passion with one another and would have most likely waited for the next one. Luckily for them, Fox had asked for their meeting with Ozpin to be as late as he could manage, so there were no other people in the building. After a few stops on the way up, Fox undid the button on Neo's jacket and began working on unfastening her chocolate brown corset. Neo slid her jacket off and zipped Fox's vest down to reveal his toned, scarred chest; all of this whilst their lips still kept the other company. Fox's upper body became exposed as the vest joined her jacket on the floor and Neo felt her face heat up ever faster than before at the sight of the boy, her body experiencing something she had never experienced before with anyone - desire. Her corset was nearly loosened completely when the soft bell sound of the elevator reaching a new floor snapped the pair of them out of the lustful trance they had entered. He shot himself as far back as he could manage, the wall behind serving as a very solid reminder that this was as far as he could go. Their breathing was heavy and their bodies gleaming with beads of sweat.

"Gods Neo, I'm sorry for-"

' _Just-_ ' she held her hand up, stopping him. The she sighed as her thoughts continued, staring at the mass of glowing buttons behind her. ' _We've hit basically every button for the next 16 floors. We better get ourselves re-dressed before we see him. We'll discuss it later._ ' Reluctantly, Fox agreed. He'd rather speak to her about it now, but she had a valid point - Ozpin wouldn't exactly want to see two out of breath, partially de-clothed people walking into his office.

As the elevator doors finally opened into his office, Ozpin turned round in his chair to see Fox walking out zipping his vest up and a girl walking out after him picking her jacket off the floor and slipping it back on. As Fox learned the hard way in that elevator, corsets are notoriously more difficult to do up than they are to take off. A solitary grey eyebrow was raised at the sight before he greeted the two.

"Good afternoon Mr. Alistair. I trust that you are doing well?"

"I am yes sir." The Headmaster looked round his second year student at the smaller girl.

"And who might you be?" The girl started signing to the man in hopes that he may understand. His response seemed to answer her question. "Very nice to meet you, Neo. If you don't mind, you are mute aren't you?" The girl pointed to her lips and nodded. "Right. So, Mr. Alistair; you wanted to talk to me about something?"

"Yes sir. About the Parchment of Volentes and what it can do. You kept a lot of information away from my team when we were briefed and from what I have been told you refused to share any more information upon de-brief. I would like to know everything you do about it."

"Of course. But I must ask - why is Ms. Neo here as well? I was under the impression it would be just yourself seeing me."

"Well, back at the Museum I grabbed the artefact -"

"Yes, that _would_ explain a lot of things actually."

"- but the only reason I did was to get it away from Neo; who also touched it at the same time." The man in green sat straighter, as if what his student had just said was a revelation to him.

"And I presume that both of you have experienced the same things then?" They nodded. "Right, then I know exactly what has happened." The man took a sip from his mug, then started his explanation. "The Parchment of Volentes split itself in two when you touched it. Not out of choice, but rather uncertainty. Normally it would go to just one person, but as two of you touched it and deemed you both worthy of its power, it split itself and now equal parts of it are resting in the souls of each of you. It's trying to get back together and make itself whole, for only when it is a complete item can its purpose be fulfilled. It can grant the wish of anyone who is in possession of it. Or rath-"

"What like a Genie?" Fox looked at the ground embarrassed, realising that comment was supposed to be a thought in his head. "Sorry..." Neo giggled at that remark, but sadly she could not make the sounds synonymous with the action and so Fox couldn't hear the fact she found his comment funny.

"Or rather, who _it_ possesses. If the artefact deems a person worthy of its ability it will graft itself onto the person's soul and will remain there until such a time as they make their wish. Once that wish has been fulfilled, it disappears until that person dies and then for a few more years afterwards, just to make sure that same person definitely cannot claim the artefact twice. The two parts need to be one; it's unnatural for it to be any more than one entity. It becomes its driving force. And to liken this to something you may both understand, the two halves of the Parchment of Volentes - and by extension, you two - are effectively soul mates. The two halves are seeking to become whole in the only way it deems right - intimacy. Every now and then there'll be times where you are in close proximity those urges will kick in and you feel the need to be in each other's arms, correct?" The two people blushed hard, recounting their little ride up here. "That's the artefact trying to become whole again. Its purpose was to grant a wish, but if it's in two parts it couldn't possibly do that."

"Okay, so how do we get this wish granted or stop those, um, 'intimate moments' from happening?"

"The only way to stop the latter from happening is to make it believe that it doesn't need to." The expression of both on their faces spelt confusion. Ozpin sighed as he tried explaining in a less cryptic manner. "If you two remain close to one another and make the artefact believe that there is a connection between you two even if there isn't, then it may not need to force those thoughts of immense passion into your heads. Do things together as a pair that may fool it; learn something new together, communicate, interact, be with one another. As for the wish itself, I cannot help you there."

"Thank you sir." Fox bowed his head and turned towards the elevator. Neo followed suit. Once the pair of them were back inside the metal box, Neo spoke to Fox.

' _So... how do we explain this to your team?_ '

"Difficulty, that's how."

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta: EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Did y'all notice what was different? I mean, it's in here twice... I've got me a beta! **EnigmaProtocol** [ **Enigma** from now on] and I are working to improve each other's stories, proofreading them and giving everybody the best we can give. This will be a continued partnership throughout the entire writing process of this story and the entirety of his story - which I shall not give away what it is about, that is for **Enigma** to do of his own accord.

So yeah, part 2 of **Senseless** is underway. I can tell you now, the story is shaping up to be a big one. Hope you're all strapped in for the long haul, 'cause we're going to be here for a while methinks.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	11. You Made Me Do This

**KEY:** **  
**

"Normal speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thoughts_ '  
 **# - 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta: EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

"'Soul mates' by technicality, huh?"

"Yes Coco. Like I haven't explained that already."

"No need to get shirty with me, lover boy."

" _Coco, can you please not?_ "

"Sorry Neo. It's just too much fun - Fox has always been very sheltered and had stayed away from relationships and now he's got one because of technicality and I just think it's great!" - " _Besides, you've told me you think he's cute._ "

" _COCO! You are so lucky he is blind!_ "

" _Secret's safe with us._ " - "How's this all going to work then? Neo's not a student here."

"We don't need to worry about it too much."

"Of course we do Yatsu! I don't want any more of those passionate outbursts." Velvet spotted Neo shrugging slightly and could help herself from letting out a hearty giggle. The ice cream girl noticed and her eyes blinked white in panic as she furiously shook her head, seemingly saying " _Don't tell him I did that!_ " The Faunus metaphorically signed zipping her lips shut. Yatsuhashi continued.

"No, I mean we only have four more days until we break up for the end of the semester. Then we have a full two weeks where we can hopefully sort everything out for you two. Until then, we make do. Neo," - " _where do you stay when you're not here?_ " The tall boy switched to Sign Language out of politeness and also to test and see if he'd retained the knowledge she had imparted on him.

" _Somewhere else. It's not close by any means, but I wouldn't call it a trek to get there._ "

" _And how easy is it for you to get into Beacon?_ "

" _I've sneaked in basically every day for the past 2 months now, I think I'm fine on that front._ "

" _Of course._ " - "So, if Neo keeps sneaking in every day for the next four days after classes until we're done with this semester and she and Fox just sit around and feign affection for a bit, that ought to keep the urges at bay long enough so that we can think up a plan for the next two weeks."

"Sounds like a great plan Yatsu. Maybe you should take my role."

"I appreciate the sentiment Coco, but you are a far better leader than I ever could be. We need to make sure that at least one of us is with them just in case the urges strike and they need to be separated."

"I'm okay with that Yatsu. But there are three of us to do this over four days."

"You and Coco can work as a pair, I shall work alone. If anything happens, I should be large enough to keep them apart whilst the urges subside."

"You _sure_ you don't want my role Yatsu?"

"I am positive." The fashionista smiled and winked at her teammate over her sunglasses.

"Tonight then, what's the plan?"

"I suggest you and Velvet go out together. It has been a while since you have, and I'm pretty sure you still have that dress on reserve from before the mission at the Museum." Their team leader's eyes visibly widened, even from behind her sunglasses, and her hands smack on the side of the bed she was sitting on.

"Holy shit, you're right! They're going to think I'm dead or something! Velv, grab your make-up; we're going straight to that place, getting your dress, getting you looking even prettier and going for a meal. If we hurry, we'll get to the shop before they shut for the night."

"Oum, I love it when you're demanding" her Faunus companion smiled as she bounded up to grab her make-up and put it in her bag.

"Gross, get a room" Fox teased.

"Later, lover boy. You've got first dibs." Neo's face shone bright red with embarrassment as she stared the gunner down. She just smirked back at the petite woman and signed back " _Kidding. Sort of._ " - "C'mon hun, we don't want to miss our ride."

"See you later guys!"

"Bye!" And then there were three. Yatsuhashi looked over at Fox and Neo, who were sitting incredibly uncomfortably on the bed and sighed.

"This may be a long night."

Yatsuhashi wasn't too far from the truth, it did seem like a very long night. From when Coco and Velvet left just before 6:20pm to when the mute woman went 'home' at 9:00pm, Fox and Neo basically did nothing with each other. Sure, they sat together all night but they didn't do anything together. Fox grabbed his book from earlier and continued to read it, Neo got out her Scroll and was playing games. When the time came, Neo waved goodbye to Yatsuhashi and said goodbye to Fox in his head or something, because he replied without knowing that she was leaving beforehand. The only thing of interest that happened to them all night was that Neo went to leave through the door, but instead had a bit of fun; she grabbed her parasol and jumped out of the window, floating down to the ground using her weapon as a makeshift parachute. Yatsuhashi had to admit, he'd never seen that before.

"You know Fox, when I said 'feign intimacy', I meant actually try to show some sort of affection for one another."

"Yatsu, I appreciate your concern. But everything worked out just fine tonight and I would be perfectly content if it stays like this."

"Yes, tonight was okay. Tomorrow may be too. But what happens in three or four or twelve days' time when something _does_ happen and you feel bad afterwards for letting those easily avoidable thoughts to cross your mind?"

" _If_ that happens you and/or Coco and Velvet will be there to pry us apart."

"Fox..." The tank moved from his own bed and sat on his partner's. "We will not always be there; even if we were, sometimes we may not be able to help you, only you can help yourself."

"I know that. I also know that reading braille is actually very difficult to do whilst someone is spouting philosophy in your ear."

"I do not think that was called for."

"You interrupted my flow, it was entirely called for."

"Listen to me. You have always shied away from giving affection because you are afraid, and you have never really noticed when affection was being given because you cannot see what everyone else sees and that prohibits your judgements. But this has been handed to you on a plate. Do not swat it away like some ungrateful child, follow the path to see where it may lead. Should you feel like it has not worked, there is no stopping you from turning back. But if that is the case you are in for the long run - the artefact will still remain inside you for the rest of your life and you will always be subconsciously drawn back to this chance you may miss if you sit around doing nothing." He got up and grabbed his night clothes before heading towards the bathroom. "I do not want to see my brother suffer." Fox's attention shifted from the lumpy page of his book to his brother-in-arms as he walked into the bathroom to change and ready himself for sleep. Fox dwelled on that thought for no longer than it took the sound of the clicking door to fade into nothingness before the boy shut his book and threw himself under the covers.

* * *

The next night fared in very much the same way as the night beforehand. Yatsuhashi wanted to go see a new movie at the cinema, so he decided that tonight would be when he'd go. He bid his farewells and left his teammates and Neo in their dorm. As soon as Yatsuhashi was gone, Fox went for his book. Neo grew interested in it. There were no words on the page, just a bunch of lumps. She'd never really seen that before. Then again, neither had Fox when you think about it. She started talking to the other girls in the room about it.

" _Coco?_ "

" _Yes Neo, what's up?_ "

" _Fox's book; what is it?_ "

" _It's a braille book._ "

" _That's braille? It's much more different than I thought it would be..._ "

" _What did you think it was?_ " The mute took a second to think before replying.

" _I'm... not too sure, come to think of it._ "

" _The words are like that so that blind people can feel the words rather than see them._ "

" _Makes sense. Have you read any of them?_ "

" _No I haven't. Sorry._ "

" _Me either,_ " Velvet added, " _but Fox has told us about them. Most of these books are different to the ones you, I or Coco read._ "

" _How?_ "

" _Well, some focus less on the physical attributes of a person or a scene and instead really work on making the dialogue stick or the action very descriptive. One author's reasoning was 'Why write something that people aren't going to understand? If someone cannot see, why waste time telling them that the blossoming trees looked like candyfloss when he or she has no real concept of either of those things?' I don't understand personally, but I get the thought behind it. This one isn't though, I think it's a normal book transcribed in braille._ "

" _I see._ "

" _Well, at least_ _ **you**_ _do..._ "

" _Velvet!_ " Coco playfully smacked her girlfriend's arm. " _Have you been hanging around Blake when Yang's been there again?_ "

" _Maybe... they're inseparable at the moment and it's kind of cute. Even the terrible puns._ "

" _So anyway Neo; why the fascination all of a sudden?_ "

" _It's just... I want to learn it. So that I can read with Fox._ " The partners simultaneously "Aww"ed aloud, causing Fox to finally divert his attention away from the book to the other three people in the room.

"What is it this time?" The girlfriends panicked, not knowing what to say. Luckily, Neo was being level headed and signed the words " _Puppy or kitten_ "

"It was a picture of a puppy. It was so adorable."

"I'm glad, but I kinda don't want to hear it. I'm reading." Neo furrowed her brow and crossed her arms at Fox's reply.

" _Is he always like this with books?_ "

" _If it's good, which this one seemingly is. He'll be like this until he finishes it - and I don't know how long that'll take._ "

They needed to talk. She signed at Coco and Velvet so that they knew what was going on.

" _I'm going to talk. Give me five minutes. Stay nearby, just in case._ " They nodded and let her do her thing. She shifted her weight to talk to Fox and clapped to grab his attention. His milky white eyes looked at her.

"Can I help you?"

' _We need to talk. Now._ '

"Fine, what did you want to talk about?"

' _Not out loud. Privately._ '

"You want to...? Okay." He shut his book and sat crossed legged on his bed, staring at her. His inner voice now sounded in her head, just as hers did with him. ' _What about?_ '

 _'Why won't you do something about us?_ '

' _We are, aren't we? We're here, together, in a room and, as such, nothing is happening. That's what Ozpin wanted._ '

' _No, Ozpin wants us to do things together as a pair. As a **pair** , Fox, not separate things whilst the other is in the room._' Her expression darkened slightly as he continued, failing to see the urgency and importance behind her actions.

' _I do not have the time to do that sort of thing._ '

' _Yet you have plenty of time to sit around and read your book._ '

' _Hey, this book is really engrossing, all right? The author just grabs my attention, I want to get to the end of it._ '

' _Listen I just... I don't want to be spending the rest of my life alone. I want something and this is the perfect opportunity for me to find something. Find someone._ ' Fox scoffed at the idea, then spoke aloud.

"I don't care about that Neo. I want to finish my book. And after, I want to live my life my way. Let me do that." He grabbed the object of his affection and stormed out of his dorm. Coco and Velvet crossed the room to their friend, half expecting her to be in tears. The sight they saw was much worse.

Her face was bone dry and her expression was that of anger.

"Neo...?"

" _He forced me to do this; I'm going make him regret choosing that book over me._ " The girls looked a little bewildered at that remark.

"Um... how?"

" _You'll see._ " She grabbed her parasol and her Scroll, then raced off to the local library.

Within minutes of arriving there, she found a member of staff who could understand Sign Language.

Moments after questions were asked, she'd found the books on learning braille, plus a couple of sizable texts that she could test her knowledge on afterwards.

She was 'home' soon after carrying four sizable books with her. She placed them on the floor and started searching everywhere else for various items.

Neo needed necessities.

Blanket - check.

Books - check.

Torch - check.

Spoon - check.

Tub of ice cream... ' _Shit._ '

A quick trip to the store later, Neo walked back through her door carrying five tubs of ice cream. She tossed one towards the pile she'd started earlier and put the remaining four where they'd normally be stored. After they were stored away, she returned to her pile.

Tub of ice cream - now it can be a check.

Music - check.

First alarm clock set to go off every 4hrs - check. Press!

Second alarm clock set to go off every 4hrs - present, waiting for 20 minutes before pressing.

Neo cracked her neck and prepared for a long night of learning. She had learnt to use the Uberman Sleep Cycle, so she only needed 20 minute naps every 4hrs and yet still performed to the same standards as someone on a normal sleep cycle. She'd memorised plans in immaculate detail in a few hours. Learning how to read braille may take her a little longer, but she didn't care; she's got a couple of days to play with, and that's all she needed.

' _Alright Fox. Prepare to meet the_ _ **real**_ _Neo._ '

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta: EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

I'm going to have some fun with this next part, I can tell. Neo's a very calculating woman, and now she's got a goal to strive for. Also, you'll get to see another character trait I always thought she'd have come to light either in the next Chapter or the following one.

Now, **Enigma** mentioned during the beta process for this Chapter that maybe I should include a key at the start of Chapters to help make it easier to understand what method people are using to communicate (speech, Sign, thought, Scroll etc.), so I want to ask you: do you want that? A simple private message or your answer in a review is all I'll need, and I'll include the key at the top of each Chapter if enough people want it. Even if you find it easy to understand, would others? I won't add it to any Part 1 Chapter as it's not really important back there, but from the start of Part 2 I can kind of see where he is coming from.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	12. Separate Thyself From Thy Attachment

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta: EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

Two days until Beacon broke for the end of semester and Fox was still diving into his book whenever he got the chance; he was so invested in the plot that nothing really else seemed to matter to him, a fact that worried his teammates. They met up after their lunch break away from the boy himself to talk, voices hushed in case he walked by and started listening.

"Okay, what are we going to do about this?" the team leader queried. "I am open to any and all suggestions." Yatsuhashi offered first opinion.

"We could let Fox read through the book." Coco had already deemed that option as a no-go, so scrapped this version or any subsequent versions the second she heard anyone speak it. But, out of respect for her team's opinions, she let him finish. "Once he has completed it, then he will not have it to distract him from what he needs to do, which is to be with Neo right now."

"Valid point." Velvet added. "However, what's to stop him from finding a different book? If he's stuck on this one, so long as he can't get it he can't finish. I say we hide it somewhere, like at the far side of Forever Falls, or in Goodwitch's cabinets."

"Okay, hunny-bun, you need to stop hanging around with Ruby so much. Whilst her ideas are fun and all, they work well within the confines of her own team, maybe even extending as far as Team JNPR. They're not second year material, and whilst I hold nothing against her - Ruby _is_ two years younger than all of her peers - it shows sometimes. We also have to remember that Fox can sense things when he wants to. He'd just focus his Aura and *bam!*, he's found where you've hidden his book."

"Sorry, I guess Ruby's nonsensical ramblings do stick after a while. I'll space out my meetings with Blake a little more, or try to find times where Ruby and Yang aren't around to distract her."

"That's okay Velv. Forgiven and forgotten." The beret wearing girl kissed between the Rabbit ears on her girlfriend's head, a very passionate show of affection between two people amongst Faunus kind, before huddling back in the group to continue the discussion. "So, what else have we got?"

There was an uneasy silence between the trio. Neither of them had any valid ideas. Fox might win this battle without even trying. All three of their Scrolls buzzed at roughly the same time. Most of the time, it meant that there was a mission for them to undertake. This time, however, was because of a message sent from Neo's Scroll, but under the name Bubblegum instead of either Neo or Cherry.

 **B - 'Do any of you know where Fox is keeping his book?'** They all looked at each other and wondered why she'd want or need to know that.

"I'll reply." Coco said as she typed out their collective message.

 **C - 'We're all together right now, except Fox. He's got it on him, he's reading it right now.'**

 **B - 'Damn it! Alright, tomorrow I need you to get him to keep it in your dorm.'** An odd request; odd enough to warrant questioning.

 **C - 'Why do you need him to keep it there?'**

 **B - 'You'll see :)'**

 **'** _ **2 files attached. Click**_ _ **here**_ _**to view**_ **'** Coco did click and saw that she had taken a photo of a couple of books open to various pages that, upon inspection, couldn't be completely deciphered by any of the team; but the look of the text and the title of the fourth book lying cover up beside them titled "How to Learn to Read Braille" gave them a pretty concrete idea of what she may be doing.

"Oh my Oum, she's actually learning to read braille for Fox. That's adorable!"

"I also must commend her skill. You said she had no idea about how braille worked yesterday, yet it seems she has picked up a very large portion of it in what seems to be only 12 hours or so."

"I know; I'm a little jealous, actually." Coco swiped to view the second photo, and saw a sight that really confused her. A mass of blue, some rope and a pack of gum. She hid her Scroll in a panic. "Okay... probably not meant for us, that one... So, we have our plan. How are we going to convince him to keep the thing in our dorm? He's glued to that thing at the moment."

"Well, it's the last day of the semester, I'm sure we can find some reason."

"Agreed." Coco messaged 'Bubblegum' back.

 **C - 'So, are we going to be seeing you this evening then? Or have you still got some work to be getting on with?'** No reply. Nothing. They waited the rest of their lunch break for a reply before Velvet checked to see if anything had come through. Still nothing under twenty minutes later.

"Oh well, I guess that means 'Yes' to the work then." The trio were just about to head to class before they all got a message. It was from 'Bubblegum'.

 **B - 'Sorry, Uberman-ing and didn't want to mess my cycle. Yes I'll be working, so no to seeing me tonight.'**

"Okay, I am a bit more than a little jealous now..." And with that all cleared up, they headed to their post-lunch Grimm Studies class.

* * *

The final day of the semester. Neo/Bubblegum needed Fox's book to remain in the dorm for some reason she was refusing to tell anyone, but as he was so lost in the pages of the book the team thought that it may not be such a bad idea to have him pried away from the mass of paper for a day.

"Fox, do you mind leaving it here for today?" The boy looked up from his book; he'd woken up significantly earlier than he usually did, so he decided that would be the perfect time to continue reading. He wouldn't disturb anyone with a reading lamp; the only person it might irritate in his dorm would be the person currently asking him to leave the book behind due to her massively sensitive Faunus hearing.

"Why? I want to read it Velvet."

"Because Fox, it's the last day of the semester. We have two whole weeks where you can sit around from before the crack of dawn to way into the twilight hours reading that book. It'll only be for today. Please?" The boy heard the slight plea in her voice. She was desperate for him to leave the book and enjoy himself on the last day. A smile grew on her face as he caved in at his adorable little teammate's request.

"Okay, okay. Just for today, I'll leave it in here." He shut the book and lay it on his pillowcase as Velvet squealed slightly.

"Thank you Fox!" she jumped at him and caught him in a hug that toppled his balance slightly, nearly knocking him clean onto his back. A horrified gasp came from the bathroom door as Coco came into view.

"How _could_ you Velvet? I leave your sights for but a minute, and I return to see you cheating on me! With a man of all things! I should have known better than to love someone like you, you Temptress!" The way their team leader spoke her words of "pain" and "betrayal" over her girlfriend's actions were so over the top it became comical. Velvet played along, besting her partner's ridiculous and rather entertaining act with her own.

"Alack! Fair maiden, your eyes deceive you. I merely embrace this man as a friend would. My heart shalt always belong to you and you alone."

"Oh my sweet angel, how can thou be so beautiful?" Coco took Velvet's hands and pulled her in closer as if the pair was to start dancing a slow waltz around their dorm. "'Twas as if the Heavens opened one day and shone a light upon Remnant and the Silly-voiced Man Voice in the Sky did speak and say: 'Here be'eth a woman of beauty and grace, and the best sex thou shalt ever experience!'" Velvet couldn't help herself, she burst out laughing so suddenly that her insides started to hurt. Her body naturally started to sway to a beat neither could hear but both could feel. A natural rhythm for the pair of them.

"Y'know, it started out quite nicely Coco. I'll give you points for that."

"Hey, I'm just telling the truth."

"I know, I know."

"And you can't say I don't try, okay hun?"

"I never did anyway." The pair finished with a quick but passionate kiss as they swayed to their tune. As they parted, Fox started clapping and cheering as if he were at a show. He'd never been to one, but he read that this is what people do.

"Bravo! Bravo! Encore!"

"Did you hear that Coco? An encore; they _want_ us to kiss more!"

The fashionista grinned. "I like this crowd."

"No, that's not what I me-" his words were cut off by the sound of their lips meeting once again. Fox grumbled, which caused the couple to start laughing during their kiss, losing its intimacy and causing it to break off quicker than they wanted, but they weren't complaining - it was an encore kiss. "We'd better head off, Goodwitch doesn't like people being late, even on the last day."

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta: EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

So, as you can see, **Enigma** found some Wi-Fi, read the Chapter and it's now been Beta approved! Sorry to those who were confused as to my earlier posting - I may have jumped the gun ever so slightly with the apology, and for _that_ I apologise.

The problem now is that _I_ don't have Wi-Fi due to weird circumstances at home. I will do my best to get these Chapters to you as soon as I can though; I will always try and find Wi-Fi on a Thursday for uploading. And as you can see, I've included a key at the start of the Chapters in Part 2 so that speech doesn't get confusing as per the request of a few of you. I know I mentioned it before but it warrants repeating; it doesn't really factor into Part 1, so I saw no need to add it there and I will keep to that.

And whilst I haven't explicitly stated it this time, there is a small hint at what Neo does in this Chapter, something that _will_ be explored in greater detail next time - trust me.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	13. Hot vs Cold, & Hot Doesn't Always Win

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

Lunchtime once again. Team CFVY sat with their lunches as YCVF, a practice not too uncommon nowadays with their team leader and shy Faunus teammate dating midway through their first year. They all laughed and joked about the class they'd just finished between mouthfuls of above-average-for-Beacon-cafeteria food when Coco was smacked on the back of her head with the bag of a passing student. She caught her sunglasses as they could have flown off her face and onto her tray, or worse - into her food, and stood to confront the perpetrator who was blissful walking away.

"Hey!" her voice was raised to an extent where the girl would have very easily heard her, but not so loud as the entire dining hall stopped and stared at the second year, wondering what she'd have to say. But the girl walked away still. Coco even swore she saw her pace hasten. The beret wearing girl's fists balled as she freed herself from the seat and started walking after her, needing to close the substantial gap as fast as she could without running. Despite the brat's size, she put her through her paces. Eventually throwing caution to the wind, Coco started lightly but purposefully jogging to catch the figure that was still just walking away from her. By now, the remaining three quarters of Team CFVY were completely out of earshot - even the hearing range of their rabbit eared teammate, and Coco was understandably angry that she was having to do this. After what seemed like far too long, the team leader grabbed the shoulder of the girl and turned her round.

"What do you think you're playing at?" Her following words got caught up in her throat so badly that her only cause of action was to swallow them back down again. She was struck at the genuine flawlessness of this girl, a fact Velvet would have scrutinised her something fierce for even though Coco had mentioned a few times to the Faunus girl that she can, and probably will, still admire other people from all walks of life but her heart would always be Velvet's. This girl's hair almost glowed in the Vale sun with fluorescent blue light that transfixed Coco's gaze first. She found herself looking at her eyes; whilst the allure of Velvet's very boringly brown eyes was something special to her, the sheer wonder of the girls almost metallic blue orbs caused a very slight blush to creep its way up the team leader's neck. Her lipstick was a bubblegum blue and the blusher she wore on her cheeks was quite natural in comparison, but there was still a trace of blue in there. Then she finally stared at her outfit; the girl must have been from Vacuo, because her outfit matched none of the uniforms from the other three schools. She wore fairly lofty, almost sky blue platform boots that were adorned with lighter and darker blue swirls. Her legs were covered with off-white leggings that had a hint of blue running along the hems. The top half of her outfit consisted of nothing too fancy, but the way she wore it was so different; a grey t-shirt that stopped just above her abdomen, an open sky blue vest and a longer jacket that was, for all intents and purposes, the same colour as her leggings; but instead of sitting over her shoulders it was wrapped fashionably around her waist. It looked amazing.

The girl realised she'd been staring too long. She shook her head and tried resuming her verbal attack on the girl for hitting her.

"I said, why did you hit me?" The girl, who was much shorter than she was even in heeled boots, grinned and shook her head. "What's that supposed to mean, huh?" She placed a finger on her lips, Coco noticing for the first time that she was sporting nail polish in a very similar colour as her eyes. The metallic blue hues shifted to their Heterochromia norm of pink and brown, then with a wink at the girl the woman's eyes shifted back to the fake colour she was sporting. Were it physically possible to do so, Coco's jaw would have hit the floor. As it wasn't possible, it instead dropped as far as it would go.

"Neo?!" she replied in an awestruck whisper, knowing full well that her presence in the school was a big risk for her. "Did you do that to get my attention?" The woman in disguise nodded with a grin, then handed Coco a pack of blue bubble gum. "Um..." The woman nodded her head towards the pack, indicating to the Huntress-in-Training that there was something there. Upon closer inspection, she lowered her sunglasses to read what was inscribed on the box.

 **I need to get inside your dorm. What's the code/can I borrow your Scroll? x**

Brown eyes looked into metallic blue as the woman's grin widened once more. Still trying to get over the fact that this was Neo in a costume so amazing even she didn't realise it was her (and she'd spent a very large portion of time over the past month and a bit in her company), Coco handed the woman her Scroll as discreetly as she could and spoke to her in very hushed tones, forgetting that she could use Sign and be completely silent.

"Is this for the thing you've got planned for Fox?"

A nod of confirmation.

"Are you going to tell me what you're planning?"

A shake of the head.

"Will we see you later then?"

A playful wink with a slight twinge of malice. Oh dear... Coco thought fast, making it look like she'd scolded the younger looking 'student' for her inability to watch her surroundings. Afterwards, she stormed back to her teammates and sat down next to Velvet once again, her food now cold and their plates almost completely empty.

"Care to share what that was about?"

"Pass. I'm too hungry to bore you with the details." She took a bite out of her food. She then promptly and ungracefully let the partially chewed food spill out of her mouth and into the waiting napkin. "I've decided that I am no longer hungry; but there aren't really any details to share." The leader stretched, then noticed how the other three members were still staring at her, not content with her response. "There aren't any details guys!"

* * *

"See Fox, that wasn't so hard was it? We're done now, you've got two weeks to spend with Neo and finish your book."

"Thank you, I appreciate it. I shall spend as much time as I can with my book, then _if_ I finish it quickly enough I will spend the rest of my time with Neo. Sound fair?" The blind boy's teammates all agreed as they walked towards their dorm. Fox intended to drag out his reading as long as he possibly could; he disliked being in the presence of that nuisance that had plagued his life ever since the Museum. But as they got closer, they realised that the door was already slightly ajar. No one had been back to the room since they'd left this morning for their first lesson. Coco had a sneaking suspicion as to why, but didn't let on. As the team entered their dorm for the first time this break they were greeted by Neo, who was partially out of her Bubblegum persona with the removal of her wig, reapplying of her gloves and her eyes returned to her natural abnormality that was pink and brown. She glanced up at the four students walking into the room and smirked as she looked directly at Fox, her fingers hastily tracing over the pages in front of her.

"Neo?" Yatsuhashi queried. "What are you doing in our dorm? How did you even get in here?" The woman lifted one hand off the page to throw Coco's Scroll back at the original owner with surprising speed and accuracy. Those not privy to the pair's one-sided conversation in the dining hall looked at their leader.

"You let her in?"

"She needed my Scroll. I assumed she was coming him here to read Fox's book to catch up." Fox's milky eyes widened and flew back towards Neo. Her expression didn't change as she knew he could not see it. Instead, she spoke with him.

' _Great book you've got here._ '

"Velvet, did you know Neo would come in here and start reading my book? Is _that_ why you asked me to keep it here?" She shyly shrugged with a very forced giggle, the sound alone being indication to her boy that the answer was 'Yes'. "Why Neo?" She didn't speak to him again, instead opting to Sign to the remaining three.

" _Tell him that it was a mistake choosing the book over me._ " The three panicked, unsure who should bare the bad news. " _Do it!_ " This was a far cry for the calm and 'chatty' Neo they had been hanging around with before. This was the real Neo. The sadistic, toying Neo.

"She says that choosing the book over her was a bad mistake Fox."

" _I was hurt by your choice._ "

"She was hurt by your choice."

" _So I learnt braille over the last two days, and I'm about to finish reading the book._ "

"She's almost finished your book, having learnt braille in a couple of days."

" _And I know what happens, so I'm going to spoil it for you._ "

"She's going to... no, Neo that's cruel!" The woman traced her hand over the book's pages one last time before she closed the book completely, her speed learning and fast processing allowed her to sail through the book at breakneck speeds and finished the book that had occupied weeks of Fox's time in mere hours.

" _Tell him, or I'll start spoiling directly to him..._ " she signed with an almighty Cheshire Cat grin.

"She's... going to spoil the book." Fox lunged towards his book, and Neo gladly let him take it. She'd learnt what she needed to, the book was useless to her now.

"You wouldn't _dare!_ " Fox shouted. Eyes started burning with an evil look that, whilst their intended target missed the stare, his teammates most certainly did not. Neo's sadistic grin reared its head. Was that a challenge? She started nearer the beginning, intent on dropping as many spoilers as she could lead up to the bigger ones nearer the end that he hadn't quite reached yet.

' _Barty Crouch Jnr. was Moody all along._ ' Fox began to panic; she'd read his book and at least had some knowledge of the subsequent ones, she knew what was going to happen.

"Neo, please." he asked firmly.

' _Sirius Black's death._ ' She was teasing Fox. His fists balled up in anger.

"That's enough, I get it!"

' _Bye bye Dumbledore._ ' She'd hit the point he hadn't reached let. He was only a few pages away as well; his favourite character was dead. At least, he assumed he was. What else could she have meant when she said "Bye bye Dumbledore." ' _Oh, but that's not the kicker, the kicker is-_ '

"ENOUGH!" Fox lunged not at where the book was this time, but at Neo herself. She sat there smugly as the boy shattered through her illusion and stared up around the room. But he couldn't feel her at all. And what made things worse, his teammates couldn't see her. But he could still hear her in is head.

' _You know what, this is too much fun. I think I'm going to go into detail._ ' He could hear the smug grin on her face. ' _So y'know when they teleport to find one of the Horcruxes? Well..._ '

"Guys, you have _got_ to help me find her! I don't want the book spoiled for me!" Genuine dread from Fox's voice was all the motivation the team needed. They obliged his request, and started searching every place they could in the room for the woman. She couldn't be too far away else she and Fox couldn't communicate.

"Can't you sense her?"

"No Yatsu, I can't! She's using _your_ meditation tricks to hide her own Aura from me!" Whilst the tall boy accepted the blame internally, he did not express so outwardly as he continued his search. Neo was apparently still rambling on inside Fox's head all this time.

' _... and so when they're back at the Tower, a few Death Eaters make their way to him. Of course, Harry is told to hide..._ ' Velvet opened the door to their bathroom to see the girl standing in front of the mirror, nonchalantly removing her makeup as if this were her own room. The Rabbit jumped to hold her still, but she shattered into pieces once again and caused Velvet to carry on falling straight into the mirror by the sink. The petite antagonising woman plopped into existence on Yatsuhashi's shoulders, her head ducked down so that she wasn't scraping the ceiling.

' _... Dumbledore was talking to them when-_ ' she was interrupted by the tall boy whose shoulders she was currently resting on grabbing her by the waist and trying to thrown her to the ground. In response, she wrapped her legs underneath the arms he currently had extended above his head to grab her. As he tried to throw, she used his momentum and threw him to the ground instead, winding him as she sat there on his shoulders, legs parted so that they weren't crushed under the boy's falling weight, feet pointing straight at Coco. She widened her legs and blew the team leader a very suggestive kiss, infuriating the girl. Neo rolled backwards away from Coco into a standing position but was "caught off guard" by Fox tackling her to the bed. She laid there, Fox's weight pressing down on her as she smirked a smirk she knew he couldn't see.

' _At least take me out to dinner first._ '

"Enough! Why do this? Why go through all this trouble?"

' _I just said: Take me out to dinner._ '

"Stop with the silly games Neo!"

' _It's not a game. If we're going to be 'Soul Mates', we need to act like it. I wanted companionship and I have that. Well, had definitely. I wanted a relationship as well, and what better opportunity than this?_ '

" _This_ is your idea of getting a relationship, sneak into someone's room and ruin the book series he's reading? That's twisted."

' _I'm new to the whole thing, what do I know?_ '

"Just..." he sighed an irritated sigh "What is it _exactly_ that you want?"

' _What did Ozpin say we should do to keep the urges at bay - urges I have to admit are creeping up pretty fast at the moment considering the position you're holding me in._ ' The blind boy literally jumped off her, giving her some room to move again. She sat up calmly as Yatsuhashi wheezed, his breath slowly coming back in and Velvet shuffled in slowly, the small cut above her eye dripping minute amounts of blood making Coco slightly madder at the girl.

"He said we needed to do things as a pair." Fox's voice was monotonous, clearly he did not want to recount the Headmaster's instructions.

' _That's what I want. I wanted to do that naturally, which is why I came to you when you were training. Then I tried a little more subtly, hence the talking to your team and being close but distant. When both options failed, this was the only alternative. So, we_ _ **are**_ _going to go out and do things together as a couple._ ' She stood and walked past Team CFVY to go to the door, turning back to the room and mentally talking to Fox, Signing for everyone else who was watching. " _I'll be here at 11:00am tomorrow; Fox and I are going to go into Vale. Goodbye._ " And with that, Neo was gone, her sadistic smile plastered over her face like a trophy.

"Fox," Coco said sternly, tending to her girlfriend's wound.

"Yes?" he replied very cautiously. She returned in a very teasing manner, the sternness clearly a ploy to get his attention.

"You have a literal nutcase for your first girlfriend; you are royally screwed."

"Thanks Coco..." he groaned as he fell face first back onto his bed.

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

So yeah, that's what I think Neo does in her off time. I know in canon that she has illusions and can 'Illusion' herself different materials, but here I wanted to give her something else. Also, I'm going to point out that yes, Neo created an entire costume from scratch in little under two days - that is insane. I _may_ explore the fact in a later chapter, but for now let's just say that it was a lot of practice, manipulating Aura, and ice cream (because why would it be anything else with her?)

The next chapters are going to be focussed around Fox and Neo's forced date - I wonder how that's going to pan out...

Well, I know; I've planned it and I'm writing it, y'all have to wait.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	14. The Date p1 - Sore Thumbs

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

"Okay, why do I _have_ to do this again?" Fox deemed his concern to be necessary; the woman who had basically blackmailed him into going on a date with her - if that's what you'd call it, depends on your perspective - after thoroughly embarrassing and outclassing the entirety of one of the best upperclassmen teams Beacon has ever seen on her own whilst barely breaking a sweat herself... okay, Fox could see why he had to do this. Unfortunately - or fortunately, again depending on your perspective - none of his teammates were like Neo, in the sense that they couldn't hear his thoughts. So they answered as if his inner monologue had never happen which, to them, it never did.

"You are going for your safety," Yatsuhashi assured. Fox and Coco audibly guffawed at that statement, the laughter subsiding just as suddenly as it sprung from their cores. A roll of his eyes later, the boy continued. "These urges that you experience could be detrimental to your life as a Huntsman. Whilst they only seem to be happening when you and Neo are in close proximity to one another, who is to say that it would be the same forever? Doing this may make things easier for you, plus it will help you get along a bit more."

"'May make things easier', Yatsu. ' _May_ '. There is no guarantee that this will work." Fox dismissed.

"There was no guarantee that things would work out for me either Fox; yet here I am with the most adorable bunny in all on Remnant by my side as my girlfriend." Coco grabbed the waist of the Faunus and pulled her closer to her own. The cheeks of the girl in question turned the shade of red that aptly coincided with her surname at the compliment paid to her. "And yet here we are-"

"-as happy as we can be" the Faunus girl finished, wrapping her arms around the neck of her girlfriends as she did so, her smile evident in her voice.

"Well..." Velvet's rabbit ears drooped at the word. Was Coco not happy with them? She turned to look into her girlfriend's eyes with an air of worry. "Happy as we can be - given the current circumstances of there being two extra bodies in the room and I am having very unsavoury thoughts about my girlfriend at the moment." Coco lowered her sunglasses and winked a teasing wink at the girl in her arms and, rather than shy away as she normally would under these sort of situations when there were unfamiliar people around, Velvet released the breath she was unaware she was holding and proceeded to rest her head on the nearest shoulder of the fashionista, a playful grin making its way across her face as well. The wink was returned.

Knuckles against the wooden door of the dorm room saved having Fox's hearing completely scarred from listening to the resident couple of Team CFVY talk flirtatiously at one another mere metres from on his left. He opened the door, and was greeted by uncomfortable silence.

"...I guess we're going for the old silent treatment you're used to then?" Neo stood outside as Bubblegum as she gazed at her 'date', the only difference in her outfit from yesterday being the butterscotch pink lipstick she was sporting. Yes, Fox was blind, but that doesn't mean she could skimp on the whole 'dress up for a date' thing. Clearly, he never got that memo. She tilted her head as a thought crossed it, the brilliant whites and light, man-made blues of her outfit contrasted completely to the deep and earthy brown, black, and copper colour palette of Fox's outfit. They couldn't have looked any different and they'd stand out like two sore thumbs. One blind, one mute sore thumb.

"Okay, before anyone goes anywhere I want to know one thing." Coco broke the grasp she had on her partner, barged straight past Fox at the door and proceeded to back Neo against the opposite wall of the hallway they were in. In quite an uncharacteristic move for him, Fox stepped forward to separate his team leader from his would-be date, despite the fact the only reason he's here is because he was blackmailed to do so and that he is in possession of half of an ancient artefact that demanded to be whole, the other half inside the girl he was stepping towards to kind of protect. Fox agreed to himself, that was a bit weird. "No, I _need_ to know..." Fox tensed, not exactly saying that he wasn't excited to have these two fight properly but at the same time kind of wishing they would and accidentally fracture his spine and give him a long time to recuperate in the Infirmary. He was taken aback; yes, he'd suggested the Infirmary to himself as a genuinely better alternative.

"Tell me... how the _hell_ did you do all of _that?!_ I mean, look at you: I didn't even recognise you first time. You're like, a completely different person. Did you make this yourself?" Neo's marginal panic faded as the reality of the question sunk in. She nodded, a satisfied grin on her face. "All of it, in what, a day?" The satisfaction of the grin turned into smugness as she nodded once again. "Holy shit..." Coco realised her question divulged into the realms of it being a jealous curiosity at her skill. "You are so showing me what you do when you're date is over." A date with Fox, then a pseudo-date with Coco Adel. Yup, sounds grand to her. Neo raised a thumb in approval of the idea, then grabbed Fox's hanging hand and walked down the corridor nearly dragging him along with him for the first few metres before he got the idea and started walking at her pace beside her, the grip on his hand removed.

"See you later, I guess. Enjoy yourself Yatsu." Fox called as he slowly recomposed himself.

"You too Fox." Once Yatsuhashi waved his teammate a fond farewell, he shut CFVY's dorm door and went to grab some things out of the draw by his bedside before he heard the very distinct sound of a zip and a clatter of clothes. He turned around only to see Coco and Velvet embracing each other, undressing each other and very passionately making out with one another.

"Could you at least have waited until I'm out of the room first? I still have things to pack up before I meet my family outside Vale for _a day or two_." He emphasised those last words in a fruitless effort to stop their proceedings are make them realise how much time they'd have in solitude together. Whilst the undressing halted for but a moment, both girls still fairly decent, Velvet broke their intertwined lips to utter a single word.

"Ten."

"Thank you." Yatsuhashi started thinking about what he needed to pack; it would be a 90 minute airship ride each way, providing they were empty, then at least an hour's walk at his pace to reach home on the best of conditions. He would need at the very least a change of clothes. Or...

"Nine." His eyes widened as he turned to the girls, still making out but clearly keeping count of the time, maybe based on how often one of them needed to come up for air.

"You're giving me a countdown?" He sounded frustrated, like this wasn't the first time this had happened to him.

"Mm hmm. Eight." On that number, the undressing restarted and Velvet leaned Coco down on to the bed, the Faunus lying atop her partner. Yatsu turned quickly and hastily to grab all the things he could grab from his drawers and a couple of things he didn't, but in his own defence he was kind of under pressure. In all his internal commotion he had completely missed the girl's count of seven.

"Six."

"Yes please" moaned Coco.

"I didn't say 'sex', though I've never heard you ask politely before."

"Well, I _am_ on the bottom at the moment." The look in Velvet's eyes radiated with passion and a lust for the utmost intimacy, especially as Coco had just willingly given her control. The undressing came much faster now as both were flustered and raring to go now, even if their towering tank of a teammate was still packing.

"You two are lucky I am nearly completely impartial to the whole scenario" he sighed, throwing his bag over his shoulder and walking out the door, being careful not to let it swing open completely lest exposing any passing first year or Professor to "Mating Ritual of the Crosshares #15".

* * *

"See you later, I guess. Enjoy yourself Yatsu." Fox called as he slowly recomposed himself. As he turned to walk alongside the smaller girl, he was pretty sure he heard his teammate calling something down the hall, though he couldn't say exactly what it was.

' _I like her. Very dominant. Are you gonna be like that?_ '

"Okay, we are _not_ in a relationship. We are doing this to fool some ancient magical artefact that is currently clinging to our souls into not making us throw ourselves into the other's arms. This is nothing more than 'business'." His milky eyes stared into her metallic blue and for a brief moment Neo/Bubblegum could have sworn she thought he'd actually seen her. Not keen to linger on a trivial fact, she shrugged and continued walking, her inner voice going silent in his head. "Where are you even taking me anyway?" All she offered as an answer was a grin, which literally meant nothing to Fox - you can't react to what you can't see.

 **~000~**

"The Park? Neo, I can come here any time that I like, why would I...?" Fox's foot was trampled over by a couple of children running and screaming. His Aura stopped any damage, but that still didn't stop the look of frustration at the two annoying small people running away from him. The mothers of the two rampant bundles of energy apologised to the Huntsman-in-Training and continued with their idle chit-chat. The day was nice, the wind was there but not bothering anyone, the sun was out, and although there were white fluffy clouds in the sky they knew their place and actively avoided obscuring the warming rays of the early afternoon. Fox blankly looked around at the green that surrounded him, then towards Neo. He burst his Aura out briefly to get an inkling of what she was doing and where she was leading him. He felt uneasy, this wasn't something he wanted to do. He _wanted_ to sit in his dorm, maybe on the windowsill, and read his book until its final page - but he was reminded of the fact that she held information contained in those final pages that he did not know, and witnessing what she was like beforehand he could tell that information may 'unwillingly' slip out should he irk her in any way.

The boy focussed on the footsteps of Neo, a sound he had now grown accustomed to and could tell them apart from others in a crowd so that should they ever go somewhere overly busy and get separated he could figure out where she... wait... _why_ was he caring if they got separated? That's what he wanted to happen. Wasn't it? Stupid brain... He re-focussed on her footsteps, something that grew more and more tasking as they approached the flowing water of the all too familiar makeshift pond, and trailed the sounds until the stopped. He stopped too, bursting his Aura yet again.

"My tree... you took me to the park - one of my favourite places in Vale to sit under the tree I always sit under - arguably my favourite place in one of my favourite places. So inspired..." he sensed the sarcasm hit the petite girl, then the death-stare that followed. There were times he was thankful he could not see; this was one of them, else he would be so far underground right now even the fabled Mountain Glenn would look down at the hole he was boring into the world. The girl grabbed both of his arms in a vice like grip, and a small terrified mini-yelp came from the boy's mouth as he was flung round and hurled into the tree. His Aura hit the bark first, then his spine. A split second later on his Aura reflexes and he may have never walked again. He needed to go see Goodwitch about testing him with some intense reflex training.

Okay, something is definitely up with his head. It may have been the impact, but to first suggest wanting to go to the Infirmary then second to actively choose to go and be subject to Glynda Goodwitch induced nightmare training was crazy.

His body roughly slid down the bark, resting where he'd normally be resting if he came here of his own accord and was not recently chucked into the tree. After a second where he tried to adjust himself, the wind was knocked right out of him as Neo fell down and forcefully lay her head right on Fox's diaphragm. Her heartrate read 'peace' and 'tranquil', whereas Fox's read 'ow' and 'someone help, I've been kidnapped'

"You done yet?" he wheezed, clearly not recovered from the initial crush of his 'date's' forcefulness. Now that she thought about it... Neo lifted her head up and tried scooting the pillow that was Fox's stomach slightly so that she was more comfortable. A tiny giggle escaped from scarred lips as the girl pressed her fingers up against part of his body.

' _He's ticklish - I've got to remember that._ ' When she deemed his position satisfactory for her, she lay her head down on him again, softer this time. Fox relaxed on feeling the hair of the woman resting gently on his side rather than slamming into it. Neo waited for all of forty seconds before she was napping. Fox usually did the same, but there were questions that needed to be answered. For starters:

' _Why am I doing this?_ '

' _I can still hear you Fox._ '

"Right." He tensed up completely - he couldn't have a single moment with her where his thoughts wouldn't be subject to constant surveillance, could he? But maybe, that was the point. The boy looked towards the girl, her ever changing Aura still a bit fuzzy to him. He reached out a hand and placed it on her shoulder, closed his eyes and let the image of Neo's Aura bleed into his mind. He'd need some time to let the effects take hold, so he leaned backwards and assumed his usual position of enjoying the openness of the space and the serenity it brought.

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

I think it's fair to say that the 'date' is going... alright, maybe? Hopefully they'll have a bit more luck later as the day continues. Part 2 of the date will be uploaded same(ish) time next week!

For those wondering, the thing with Coco and Velvet in the second third of the chapter is probably the level of lewdness this story will be at for the rest of the run (however long that may be); describing the undressing and the before, skipping to the after. I am _not_ a smut writer, and trust me, I tried to write something for my eyes only as a benchmark of what I could do and I couldn't do anything that sounded remotely nice (for smut), so don't expect any.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	15. The Date p2 - Old Habits

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

At first, it was the intensity of the glow. Then it was the hum of it. Fox turned his head to one side to see Neo's Aura burning bright around her. The clarity of her was astounding, he could see basically all of the details of her face. Her Aura clung to each and every bump on her face, every crook. Every crease of her clothing was highlighted as well. The length of time he'd spent in direct contact with her obviously meant that his trying to familiarise himself with Neo's Aura was stepped up to eleven, then took another full rotation and landed somewhere squarely around 20. He retracted his hand from her shoulder, or at least he would have had she not caught hold of it in her sleep and gripped it with a soft but powerful grip. He had to admit, he wasn't going to start complaining about the feeling, it was... no! No, he can't think that, there is nothing behind this. There are no feelings; just business. The grumble of Neo's stomach stirred her from her very deep nap. She looked up at Fox, then noticed her hand intertwined with his. She shot Fox a smug smirk she thought he couldn't see. However,

"So, do you always shoot me smug smirks? Or was that the first?" He _saw_ that?! She pulled her hand away, rising and walked away.

' _I want food. Let's go._ ' Given she was already on the move, Fox had no choice but to follow. But he found himself gazing at her, the small glow of multi-colour storming of in embarrassment. He'd never seen anyone in this level of detail before, even his own family and teammates had been or are still very recognisable, but not to this extent. It was as if they were sitting at a comfortable 480p, whilst Neo scoffed at them and glowed with her immaculate 4K resolution.

* * *

Neo found herself sat at the table closest to the window, Fox directly opposite. She had been here more than a few times, mostly due to the fact that almost no one who worked here stayed for very long, which is why she would always return: no one can recognise you if there is no one here who saw you. Even so she was always in disguise. But there were two other reasons, and the second reason was walking towards their table now with the third and final reason on her tray.

"There you are hun; one Super-sized Neapolitan Iced Shake! I know how you enjoy it, so I made it myself the moment I saw you walk in. Nice to see you back. Have fun you two." The Arctic Fox Faunus' bushy tail deliberately flicked over Neo's hair as she swivelled and made her way back to her post. Neo stared intently, the tail was so fluffy she wanted to run up to it and cuddle it forever. She had a thing for that Faunus, had for a while - but you couldn't exactly start dating someone from a species your 'partners' were actively trying to wipe off the face of Remnant knowing full well that you may either wake up one day to find they've been killed or be tasked to kill them yourself. Neo settled on what they were at the moment with the knowledge that the Faunus happily returned those feelings on equal parts, if that one night of intimacy after her "death" was anything to go by.

' _That was such an amazing night..._ '

"Was it now? Care to share?" Fox butting into Neo's thoughts caused the usually calm and collected woman to jump and her irises to blink to a pallor that rivalled the colour of her date's.

' _Could you_ _ **not**_ _?_ '

"Oh, so when you do it, it's perfectly fine. When I do it, it's crossing the line?" He teased her with his words, clearly not completely put off by her intruding in his mind as much. She let the smile creep onto her face as she looked at Fox once more, clearly more relaxed than when he left his dorm that morning. The Beacon student quickly looked around towards the rest of the little café and realised that their waitress wasn't coming back. "So, uh... where's mine?"

' _Right here._ '

"But there's only one."

' _Yup. One drink, two straws._ ' A blank look was all he gave Neo, clearly not up for that.

"I think I'll go and grab my own Shake, if you don-"

' _The person who kills Dumbledore is-_ '

"THAT IDEA SOUNDS LOVELY I'LL TAKE MY STRAW NOW THANKS!" Fox only realised he'd practically shouted his response when he felt a couple of eyes staring right at the back of his head as he took a long and purposeful sip of his - well, their - drink.

' _You are so unbelievable, y'know that?_ ' Ignoring the comment, he instead decided to talk about the drink on hand.

"Neo, this drink is actually really good."

' _Yeah. Why do you think I suggested we come here?_ '

"You didn't 'suggest' this place, you wondered away in a panic and I had to follow you."

' _Well, at least you know your place_ ' she teased him and shot him another wink and a smirk as she took a slurp from her straw.

"There's that smirk again." The ice cream girl choked on the milkshake slightly as she realised that for the second time today her literally blind date had seen her shooting smirks and winks at him. His face dropped slightly. "Hey, are you alright?"

' _How can you see me? You're blind._ ' Fox gasped in horror as he reached up and held his hands in front of his eyes, waving them to see if he truly could not see. Taking a page out of one of Coco and Velvet's SFW books he flung his hand to his head dramatically.

"Oh, woe is me! My girlfriend is right - my sight has gone! I shall never gaze upon her face again..." Neo's face flushed red, not because of the fool that Fox had made of himself, though that contributed, but of a single word.

' _...Girlfriend?_ '

"What?" Processing his words, his milky eyes widened as he looked at her, hoping that the words would fly out of everyone's ears and right back into his mouth. "Wait that's..."

' _So I'm your girlfriend now?_ '

"Well, I... I mean, there's... err... if we... um..." The more he spoke, the deeper a hole he dug. He halted his ramblings and just stared at Neo.

' _I take it "just business" is out the window then?_ '

"It was the artefact talking Neo, not me" he lied. The girl looked hurt, even her inner voice sounded it.

' _Oh. Okay. I just thought that-_ ' Deciding that he wanted the conversation to remain fairly personal and intimate, Fox switched to using his own head voice.

' _I've never done this before Neo, the whole dating thing. I'm sorry if I overreacted._ '

' _I haven't done this before either Fox. I'm just as in the dark as you..._ ' a small and playful grin caused the corner of her mouth to inch upwards ' _no offense._ '

' _None taken. I don't know how to react or what to say or what to do._ '

' _Like I said, neither do I._ '

' _But what about,_ ' he nodded his head towards the counter indicating the Faunus waitress Neo was thinking about earlier ' _her? Didn't you say you had fun?_ '

' _That was different Fox. That was..._ ' Neo cast her mind back to the night she ran from Roman, Cinder and the others.

She came here as Neo, still sobbing silently and sat in her usual spot. The Faunus girl came by to see if she was alright and in a moment of pure instinct she grabbed the Arctic Fox's face and kissed her. What surprised Neo the most was the fact she didn't pull away, but let the kiss continue. After her shift was done for the night, the two headed back to the Faunus' abode where they spent their time in each other's arms relieving any tension the pair had stored up in a night of just sex, no emotion behind it - at least not on the Faunus' part. After the night was over, the woman who could speak said that she didn't want them to go any further than this, that the night was amazing because there weren't any feelings behind it. But even so, her door would be open for Neo if she ever needed it - so long as she didn't just sneak in. Neo nodded reluctantly, though the girl didn't need to know that last part, and they went their separate ways after that - Neo off to chase Fox whilst the Faunus went back to work.

' _...that night wasn't anything to do with relationships or anything. Yeah, I enjoyed myself and she did too. But it was purely sex. It's always been purely sex with me. I never have had any chance to take things slowly, I'd be moved on soon after I got somewhere so I take my chance and just go at it with them. Sometimes it's just that, other times-_ ' she looked over at the Faunus ' _-other times it's a little harder to walk away. She was one of those times. With you it's, well, different._ ' Fox reached across the table and placed his hand on Neo's, a gesture she greatly appreciated.

' _Neo, we're going to make it through this. This artefact inside us, we can - we will beat it._ ' - "I promise." Neo wiped away the solitary tear that fell down her face as she took one final slurp through her straw, finishing the milkshake.

' _C'mon Fox, the day's drawing in slightly and I need to head somewhere before it closes for the day._ '

"Sure thing." The couple rose and walked out of the café with arms linked. Neo took one final look back at the Arctic Fox Faunus, who saw them leaving and blew Neo a kiss followed by a thumbs up at the scene she saw. Neo winked and waved back, then headed with her date to their next location.

"Why didn't you say something to her earlier?" the café owner, a large, grey bearded man with a voice that you really wouldn't associate with his description, asked. "I think she liked you back."

"Too late for that now, Pol."

"It wasn't back then." The owner went back to doing what he was before as the Faunus sighed defeated, glancing over at the table her cute little crush was sitting moments before, her giant milkshake glass being removed by another member of staff.

"I know..."

* * *

The shop was on the outside of Vale's main shopping district, it made sense that Fox had never seen it before. But given its sheer size, he was also really amazed how he couldn't have seen it. Walking inside it was like entering an Aladdin's Cave of Materials and Equipment that Fox couldn't even begin to comprehend. Neo walked up to the man behind the counter with a smile and a bounce in her step, pinging the bell on top to draw his attention away from his work.

"Hello, how can I... Little Neo! Delightful to see you again so soon." The man stood no taller than Fox but his confidence and charisma would have dwarfed even a Goliath in size. Despite the fact he looked to be in his mid to late thirties his hair was thinning quite significantly, though due to how amazingly bright his blond hair was it could all just be a trick of the light. It was well kept and trimmed immaculately, each hair not looking a fraction out of place. Business was quite busy for them even at this time of day and everything ran smoothly around him, so the man wandered round to greet one of his best customers, his practical blue jeans, open collar white shirt and mint green waistcoat hugging his form. "I must say Neo, you have done a marvellous job as always with what you asked for." Neo stepped back slightly, giving a little twirl and curtsying afterwards, something Fox actually found incredibly cute about the woman, considering what she had been like less than a day prior. "I'm honestly surprised at you, why _don't_ you want to work with us? To be able to do something like that all day and be paid to do so." She shook her head then vanished behind Fox and grabbed him in a very light headlock out of nowhere, smiling up at the man. "Ah yes, of course. Your fighting; wouldn't want to get in the way of that." He grinned as the boy and girl struggled against one another, though neither put any effort into their actions. "Come on then Neo. Show me what you want today." He turned and started walking towards the large mass of colourful materials at the rear of the shop. Neo leaned herself down to gently kiss Fox on the cheek, leaving a very faint mark from her lipstick there, then released his head from the grip she held over him and followed the man.

' _You're going to pay for that Neo_ ' Fox thought with a smirk.

' _I look forward to it._ ' The boy ran after her, grabbing her hand and pulling her along a little bit faster than what she was normally used to in order to be directly behind the Sales Assistant. ' _Hey, what sort of things would Coco like?_ '

"Coco?" The boy had to think on that question for a little bit, he didn't pay too much attention to his team leader outside of missions - that was Velvet's job. "Well I mean, she likes Velvet. Her girlfriend mostly, but the material's a good shout too. She's a fan of brown-y colours, especially 'mocha' I think she said - basically the colours of her combat outfit are her favourite. But don't tell her I told you that she really wants to incorporate some bit of scarlet or deep red into her outfits so that she always has Velv close even when she's not there, but has never truly found the right way to do so." Neo's eyes darted around, taking in every bit of material that was available to her. You'd think that having visited the place three days ago she'd remember what was here. Whilst that was the case, she needed to reassess and formulate a plan. After a minute of thinking and another minute of spending looking at the colours favoured by CFVY's team leader, she spoke to Fox.

' _If I tell you what to get, could you get it for me?_ '

"Sure thing."

' _Cool. For the larger stuff, mention it's for me but that I'm doing it for a friend so I'll need an extra metre or two of material._ '

"Seems easy enough." She smiled, then proceeded to tell Fox exactly what he needed to get for her and in which exact colours. Before he left though, she wiped the faint lips marks off his cheek, else he wouldn't have done anything about it and they would have stayed there until he next showered. Once that was taken care of and he was off around the workshop, Neo popped on over to her friend who was sorting out some of the smaller pieces of equipment and materials Neo needed like threads and needles.

"So Neo; is that your boyfriend?" Neo's smile dropped to a half-smile as that question echoed in her head. Was Fox her boyfriend? I mean, he said she was his girlfriend. But, he then followed that up with 'it was the artefact talking', so probably not. She shook her head. "Sorry to assume, it was the lipstick, made me jump to conclusions. Your date then?" This brought her smile back up a little as she nodded. "Wow, and you're already bringing him here? That's impressive, you didn't even bring your colleagues here when you were working with them." The pair glanced over at the copper haired boy who was darting between different lanes of cloths and materials, the mound he was carrying increasing with each trip. "I saw the way you two were holding each other as well. You must have found someone truly amazing if he's treating you like this whilst you're still dating but not official. I presume it's pretty far along then the lines then?" Without breaking her gaze from the Beacon student, she shook her head and raised a solitary finger. "First date?! My, my, Neo - you really must have found your soulmate then."

 _Soulmate._

Those words brought Neo's fantasy down with an almighty crash - that's the only reason that they were together right now. All of this was because of that artefact. She felt the sudden urge to run and get away from everything, but she'd only be running back to the café again where the Faunus was, and that'd just make things even more awkward for her. In an effort to hide her utter shame at the fact this was - as Fox had put it - 'just business', she feigned really needing the toilet all of a sudden.

"Oh, sorry Neo. Door past the infused cloths. Code hasn't changed." She smiled and hurried off, keeping up her appearance until she was safely in the bathroom.

Fox carefully staggered his way back to the main counter balancing many different materials stacked higher that he could see, even with his arms as low as they would feasibly go.

"Alright Neo, I'm back so..." he couldn't feel the woman anywhere nearby. "Excuse me," he beckoned the man who walked them over "Neo was talking to you earlier, right? Where is she now?"

"Oh, she's in the bathroom. I'll let you in, she _has_ been in there rather a long time." The pair of them walked to the code-locked door as the staff member keyed in for Fox and let him enter. The blind boy eased his way in, trying his best to make as little noise and disturbance as he could. With a quick Aura burst he saw... nothing? The man had definitely said she was still in here. He ventured further down the staff bathroom and tried again, activating his semblance to get a better view of his surroundings. Whilst very faint, he finally made out the image of Neo hiding behind a shut door of one of the toilets curled up and hugging her own legs. He walked up to the door and tried to open it, but felt a strong resistance of Neo's small but very powerful legs keeping it shut.

' _Neo._ ' Her head rose at the sound of his voice inside her head, but quickly she buried it back in between her legs again. He tried once more to open the door and when that proved fruitless he rested his back against it and slid down to the floor; these clothes needed a wash anyway, so adding some toilet grime to them just gave him more reason to do so. ' _Neo, what's the matter?_ ' The silence was uncomfortable. Even for a mute, Neo felt the same. She needed to say something to Fox, she owed him that much.

' _What are we Fox?_ '

' _How do you mean?_ '

' _You and me. What would you call this?_ '

' _I... wouldn't know... Going off what this should be, we're business partners and this is just our business: we keep the artefact 'satisfied' essentially._ ' The knot that wound in Neo's stomach was unbearable. ' _And yet, it feels like you don't want that, and I have to admit I don't either._ '

' _Really?_ '

' _I hated this at first. You threw me into a tree, and it still hurts. But when you were using me as your pillow I decided that if we were in this for the long haul, it'd be in my best interests to get a better feel of your Aura, so I did that; but I dozed off. When I woke, I could see you so much clearer than anyone I ever had done that to before, even my own parents and teammates. And I felt a greater connection as well. That might have been a mistake on my part initially for dozing off, but everything that came after was anything but. This_ _ **isn't**_ _the artefact talking Neo, this is me. Know that when I say this: I like you. I'm sure you'll agree that over the course of an entire day together we have become pretty tight. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed this quote, unquote "date" - but it felt forced, like we had to do it. What'd 'ya say we have a proper one in a couple of days' time, where we_ _ **want**_ _to do it?_ ' The silence returned. It dragged out much longer than the first one, and stung the blind boy so much harder to boot.

He couldn't take the silence; he needed to know she was alright. He turned round and rested his hands and ear on the door, trying to hear what was behind the door better

' _Ne-_ ' before Fox knew it he was laying face first on the floor as the door opened. He glanced up to see Neo's Aura once more, burning with the same brightness he saw when he first woke from his nap in the park. The moment he regained some composure, the ice cream themed girl flung herself at him and hugged him tight, silent sobs of joy flowing through her. He returned the gesture in earnest.

' _Let's get back. It's getting dusky and we've got a lot to take back._ '

"Take back where?" he questioned, his voice finally getting a little bit of exercise after a long stint of talking in their heads.

' _Well, we'll head back to your dorm. You can call it early and finish your book tonight - tomorrow if you can't manage that - whilst I get a few things from Coco. I'll head home when I'm done._ ' Fox wanted to argue, to say that he'll take her stuff with him to hers first. But the way Neo was acting, the true Neo as opposed to the killer that she was trained to believe was her 'true self', made him retract his thoughts and comply.

"It's a done deal. Now, let's get all this stuff paid for."

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Methinks that didn't go so bad in the end after all. We've still got one more part of the date left, and we'll return from the serious mood of this part to a less serious conclusion with Coco and Velvet back in the picture.

...What? I like funny and I can't help it that I sometimes default to it.

I introduced a couple more concepts and idea in here that I plan to come back to at a later date, so keep an eye out for them.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	16. The Date p3 - Clean-up Crew

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

After a quick pit stop at Fox's locker to drop most of the materials in there (a task they extremely underestimated, considering how much stuff they'd need to relocate of his to fit enough of the day's purchases in there to deem the whole thing worthwhile) Fox and Neo made their way back to the Team CFVY dorm room, arms linked together. Neo was still carrying a tape measure whilst Fox carried a notepad that already had some things in it, a stylus and a slate in his free hand.

"I enjoyed today Neo. I really did."

' _Me too Fox. Thank you._ ' The boy laughed at the statement, causing the woman to furrow her brow at him. ' _What is so funny?_ '

"You're thanking me."

' _Um... yes._ '

"Unless you've forgotten, you _blackmailed_ me into coming on this with you. So, you're thanking me is basically saying 'Thank you Fox for surrendering to the terms of my blackmail'." Neo's grip on Fox's arm loosened, she was ready to ride the wave of embarrassment that was encroaching upon her all the way to the shattered moon and beyond, but a scarred arm drew her closer and a forehead rested atop her wig of fluorescent blue. "I'm glad you did that Neo; today would never have happened if you hadn't. Remember that." The once loose grip returned as the couple walked through the hallway in relative peace. Once at the dorm door, Fox turned completely so that he was facing Neo and gave the girl a big, warm hug.

' _What's this in aid of?_ '

"For helping me realise that even the worst of things can be turned into good with the right people by your side."

' _Sap_ ' she teased, returning the hug. Fox broke the hug, swiped his Scroll and stepped into the room, only to stumble and fall over something right in the doorway. The combination of Neo's quick reflexes and his own stopped him from causing an almighty crash on the floor, but when Neo glanced up at the room she really didn't think that would have been an issue. As the shattered moonlight started seeping in through the crack in the curtains, Neo could make out a few things lying around. First, the object that Fox slipped on was small in size, but very identifiable in shape - she'd personally liken it to an oversized, purple cylindrical tube of lipstick with a coned edge on one side. Looking up a bit more she saw a pile of clothes belonging to Coco and Velvet; that much she knew. What she didn't know was that those clothes had been sitting in that exact same spot for the entire time that she and Fox were together that day which - considering that night time was upon them - put it somewhere around the 8 hour mark. She shuffled forward deeper into the room and felt her foot come into contact with something that made a very metallic clink as she did so. She knelled down and inspected the mystery item, only to back off ever so slightly as she saw that the items were in fact a pair of regular handcuffs, along with an Officer hat and a (clearly fake) badge that originally had the word ' **CONSTABLE** ' scrawled over it, but there were a few major modifications to the writing; the top half of the ' **O** ' had been scratched off by someone, the ' **S** ' had all but been removed, the middle part of the ' **B** ' was removed making the letter look more like a ' **D** ' but not quite and a few lines were drawn on the ' **L** ' to make it look like an ' **E** ' whilst the reverse was done with the final letter. And finally she saw the perpetrators; Coco and Velvet, fast asleep on the latter's bed with only the Faunus wearing an item of clothing between them, and even then said item was only a pair of knee high boots that appeared to be from her girlfriend's own closet.

' _Fox... I still need her measurements..._ ' even inside his head, Neo sounded apprehensive about the whole ordeal.

' _I'm staying WAAYY over here!_ ' he said, jumping onto his bed and landing silently with only the faintest squeak of the mattress' springs making a sound, a sound he realised the room had probably heard a lot of today. ' _That part's on you. I'm on writing duty._ '

' _I hate you._ '

' _No you don't._ ' Neo eased her way towards the bed, then turned back to Fox to ask;

' _What's the first measurement I wrote down again?_ '

' _Height in feet and inches_ ' She looked at Coco, who wasn't exactly in the best of positions as is, let alone the fact that Velvet had a hold of her as well. Her mind was on track to ask 'How the hell am I meant to get her height like this' before Fox answered ' _6 foot in heels, about 5'9" without._ '

' _Okay, how?_ '

' _First week. When the question came up about Yatsuhashi's height we all compared. None of us have grown at all since then and Coco was an inch shorter than him in 2/2.5 inch heels and he's 7 feet tall._ '

' _How tall?!_ '

' _7 feet dead._ ' Neo's eyes widened in shock.

' _He's over two feet taller than me..._ '

' _Focus on how big he is later._ '

' _But I want to focus on how big you are instead._ ' Realising the intent behind her words, Fox quickly jumped to the next measurement, making sure to mentally shout them at Neo to dissuade her from doing anything like that again in the near future.

' _Hollow-to-Hem Measurement next!_ ' Neo smirked at how easy it was to make the blind boy go all awkward over a scenario that to her was as easy to talk about as breathing was. She didn't know that Fox wasn't too bad at talking about it, but more as a general subject rather than it on a more personal level. She gave her measurement, then moved on to the next one.

' _Hips._ ' Neo tried her best to avoid Velvet as she reached across once again to measure Coco.

' _She has a really nice bum_ '

' _You're supposed to be measuring, not copping a feel!_ '

' _Can't a girl do both?_ '

' _Not really, no. Kind of bad, considering she hasn't consented to you doing it or anything either._ '

' _I'm measuring her and I just so happened to feel her bum and comment on how nice it is. What is there to-_ '

' _Hips?_ ' Another number given. ' _Waist. And do it properly, without feeling her up._ '

' _But she's so-_ '

' _Neo, pull yourself together!_ '

' _Spoil sport..._ ' Waist, along with arm, front and back waist length were given without a hitch - though Fox did wonder why you needed three different waist related measurements. He reached the final patch of braille on the page.

' _Bu... really?_ ' Fox just about made out the nod from across the room. Neo knew what the measurement was, so proceeded to wrap her tape around Coco's bust.

"...again Velvet?" Coco mumbled in her exhausted state. Both Neo and Fox froze in place as the boy's team leader stirred. "...we've not long finished..." Neo shot Fox a worried glance, her tape neatly covering the middle of the fashionista's breasts to give the most accurate bust reading but the girl was fidgeting so much now that getting that reading was becoming more and more of an impossibility. "...alright, you... power crazy bitch..." Coco grabbed what she thought was the back of her girlfriend's head and pulled it down on to her own lips. Fox heard the kissing commence and he saw Neo and Coco's Aura's mesh together and all he could think to do was turn to the wall and pray to whichever Gods would listen to make this end. Neo felt kind of nice about the whole thing. Shocked at first, as everyone would, but over time she grew to like it. I mean, she did think Coco was hot, and she was the one making all the moves. Sleepy eyes parted to glance at Velvet, only for the fluorescent blue bangs of Bubblegum to be there instead. She screamed through the kiss, waking Velvet up. Neo teleported from their sights completely before either of the now-wide awake girls could truly register what was going on. Coco looked at Velvet, then at the space where someone was, then back at Velvet, and finally trained her eyes up to stare at the back of Fox's head.

"Fox?" The boy, despite being blind, kept his head facing the wall out of courtesy whilst he answered.

"Yeah?"

"I swear I saw Neo in here... is she?"

"Coco, Neo and I parted at the door fifteen minutes ago. There's no one else here except me. I will say whilst I have your attention, that you both need to clean up in here. I nearly fell over whatever you have laying around twice on my way to the bed." The resident Team CFVY couple stared at the mess they'd made of the floor in the room and looked at each other for a third time.

"Please Fox," Velvet asked rather sheepishly, her blush so prominent on her face the boy was pretty sure the colour was seeping into her Aura, "just... don't get out of bed during the night. We'll clean up our things in the morning."

"Okay." And with that he lay down and pretended to fall asleep, all while Neo hid behind his body on the floor by the far side of his bed so they couldn't see her. The girls whispered something and eventually did fall asleep once again.

' _I kissed Coco Adel!_ '

' _Big whoop; so have I. But neither of us can really say she was in the right frame of mind. She thought she was kissing Velvet with you and she was so smashed with me I thought she would pass out part way through._ '

' _I bet you still enjoyed it though._ '

' _...yeah, a little._ ' The boy smirked at his friend, who shot him a smirk back. ' _I really love your smirk, by the way._ '

' _You never explained how you can see me smirking._ '

' _And I still won't... now. I'll explain later. You'll be needing these, I believe._ ' He handed her the notepad with the braille inscribed measurements on the paper. Having both of them know the language meant that, so long as no one else from Team CFVY knows it, no one could know what they were planning.

' _Thanks Fox._ '

' _So what were you doing tomorrow?_ '

' _I've got a mannequin to construct, which may take all day. I usually only do this sort of thing for myself, so I haven't needed one for years._ '

' _And what about the day after that? You free?_ '

' _Why, you got something planned?_ '

' _I might... why are you asking?_ '

' _Because I'd like to do that thing with you, if that's not too much trouble._ '

' _No trouble at all. In fact, I'd prefer it if you came with._ '

' _Then it's a date!_ ' The word hit her. ' _Is it... a date?_ '

' _Of course it is Ni!_ ' The woman rose to give the boy a hug, a gesture he met on the way rather than being surprised by it for once.

' _I will see you then!_ '

' _...really? Sight jokes?_ ' Metallic blue eyes winked as she leaned in and planted a soft kiss on the boy's cheek.

' _You love 'em, don't deny it._ ' Before he could get another word in, Neo was gone from the dorm completely in a shower of shards. Fox rolled onto his back with a smile on his face. Neo stood outside Beacon's school grounds with an equally large smile. Both people, despite being far enough apart to have their thoughts to themselves again, had the exact same thing run through their minds:

' _I actually have a date!_ '

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

And that's the end of that. It took them a while... okay, a very _long_ while, to get there, but they've agreed to go on another date! Their first 'official' date.

Now regarding the whole measuring thing with Coco, I thought that it would be necessary for Neo to do it on a Coco that wasn't aware of what was happening for the surprise element later on; the fact she was as naked as the day she was born just adds to the comedy, methinks. I know there are premade adjustable busts for that sort of thing, but this is a secret hobby of Neo's, so I wanted it to do this sort of thing. Plus, doing it like this adds to her cool factor. And no, that wasn't an intentional pun because her thing is ice cream.

The next one's going to be a bit slower than these past few, but I've got something in mind I think y'all will enjoy!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	17. Winding Down, Prepping Up

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

Fox was always the first to rise from Team CFVY. He didn't really rely on alarms, only his own personal body clock. He was up and reading his book at the earliest possible chance he could get - whilst he knew that she probably wouldn't use it anymore, he wasn't going to give Neo another chance at spoiling the ending for him. He read as fast as he could manage, disregarding any lessons he was taught about re-reading passages just to make sure they were right and ploughed on through to the final page in record time for him. As he got there, he heard the two girls further in the room stir from their slumber. Just so they didn't feel too embarrassed about the whole situation, Fox lay on his side with his back to the room much as he did when Neo 'disappeared' last night. He felt the girls moving around the room, muttering quietly to the other as they picked up various things for the floor, including a couple of things that he and Neo didn't spot themselves. It seemed like the pair of them had a lot of fun with each other yesterday. Once it was all packed up and hidden away he heard one of them jump in the shower. Taking the cue, he slowly yawned and 'woke up' a second time, facing the room and noticing that Velvet was sitting on the bed across the room, now in some proper nightwear, meaning Coco was showering.

"Morning Velvet."

"Hey Fox..." Even after everything that happened, there was still unease in her voice. "You... didn't see anything with me and Coco, did you?" The boy let out a quick chuckle.

"Okay, first." A tanned finger pointed to milky white eyes, causing the Faunus to audibly cringe at her question.

"Sorry! Sorry, I forgot."

"Velvet it's fine, I'm just teasing. And second, no I didn't see anything." This was true. However, Neo did. And Neo was informing him about everything she saw as she walked around the room, so he knew. "I just stumbled over a couple of things."

"That's... sorry. We... did you know what... well, what we were doing?"

"Judging by what you said and how you said it -" and by his girlfriend's descriptions of the items on the floor... wait. _Was_ she his girlfriend yet? Questions for later. "- I can take an educated guess."

"Right... It won't happen again. We just had the room to ourselves and we kind of went... overboard."

"You're telling me. When did you kick off?"

"I don't think you were out of the corridor yet." Coco answered, walking through the bathroom door with a towel hugging her body and a second drying her hair. He hadn't actually heard her stop the shower. "Yatsu sure as hell wasn't."

"What do you guys mean?"

"Well..." Velvet didn't seem too keen on sharing that information with a teammate. Coco, on the other hand.

"We started making out and stripping before he had even gone. Velvs even gave him a countdown." Fox couldn't help but laugh, a sound that helped lighten the uncomfortable Faunus' mood as well.

"So you two were going at it for basically the entire time Neo and I were out? I've got to hand it to you, that's impressive."

"Well," Coco said draping her still-not-completely dry arms around the back of her girlfriend "that's what I came to expect when I started dating a Rabbit Faunus." Despite how she felt at the start of the conversation, the shy girl had clearly relaxed a little to bite back at her partner.

"Oh shut up you!"

"Yes mistress" she responded with a bow of the head.

"Um, guys. Still here." The awkward silence lasted all of three seconds before everyone started laughing hearty laughs. They had grown to know each other well over the year and a half they'd been a team, so things like this were just par for the course now.

"So Fox, how'd it go with Neo yesterday?" Coco's giggled eased off at her girlfriend's question.

"Well, it started out rather slow. We went to the park-"

"So inspired." the leader interrupted.

"I know, I said that! I was then thrown into a tree because of it."

"Ouch..."

"Yup, it's still a little sore from yesterday."

"I know the feeling."

"Coco!"

"Sorry hun."

"Anyway, we spent a while there and I thought I'd make good use of the time we spent napping under my tree, so I started to familiarise myself with her Aura. But I dozed off, and when I woke I could practically see her. You know how I've described how you all look to me? Well, in comparison, you look like shit."

"Thanks Fox."

"You're welcome. But seriously though, she was crystal clear. Sure, she glowed the colour of her Aura but I could see her like you can all see. I felt a connection too, something deeper than I ever had before. It felt... I dunno, warm I guess."

"Oh my Oum, Fox is falling in love!" Coco squealed, a slight habit she'd picked up from Velvet, as she hugged her Faunus girlfriend a little tighter with pride.

"Am I?"

"Yes, you idiot! C'mon, what'd you do next?"

"Well, she stormed off-"

"Oh shit."

"It's not bad though. I think it was because I saw her smirk at me. Did she do that a lot before?"

"Yes, she did." Velvet remembered all the times they were in here talking to one another in Sign and how Neo really frequently shot Fox smirks because she knew he couldn't see them.

"Well, when I saw it she panicked and stormed off. It's the first time I'd seen her so flustered, and it was actually kind of cute." Velvet pressed an elbow into Coco to get her attention, and with their eye contact they both nodded; he was definitely falling. "Once I caught up we went to a little café and shared a Milkshake."

"Aww, that's so a first date thing!"

"See I think we agreed that it wasn't."

"No Fox, that it most definitely a first date thing to do; share a Milkshake. It's like, fourth or fifth on Cliché Date Ideas 101."

"I'm not denying that, but both Neo and I agreed that yesterday wasn't a first date _even if_ what we did was very first date-y. Yesterday happened because we needed to do it, but as the day progressed we got comfortable and started to enjoy it. We went to one of her favourite shops and got some supplies for her as well. Providing everything goes smoothly on her end today, our official first date is tomorrow." Fox heard two pairs of feet hit the dorm floor, then suddenly felt arms thrown round his neck as he was tackled to the bed in a double hug from Coco and Velvet.

"Our little Fox Cub is finally outgrowing the Den!" Coco cooed, ushering Velvet to giggle into his chest. Fox's response however stopped the laughter dead.

"Coco... your towel..." The fashionista glanced down and noticed that her towel had indeed dropped and that she was hugging him with her naked body. With a quick glance at Velvet, who shrugged the whole thing off - Fox wouldn't do anything, Coco proceeded to continue the hug.

"What do you care? You've got your own girlfriend to stare at instead of me." There it was again, 'Neo' and 'Girlfriend' effectively being mentioned in the same sentence. That was a priority question now. "Consider this a friendly 'Team Trust Exercise'."

"Can you at least put some underwear on?"

Coco ignored the question. "So, not seeing her today at all?"

"Not today, no. She told me to finish the book, which I now have, and that she's got some work to do today that would require her full attention."

"I thought _you'd_ be the only thing she'd want to focus on Fox" she teased.

"Coco, I'm sure you've got a lot to say about where we are right now in terms of 'relationships', but please - shut up."

"I'm just offering my expert opinion on what to do at this stage and give my advice on places you could go that aren't too cliché."

"See, even _you_ with all you 'dating expertise' can't avoid cliché."

"Worked fine with Velvs here, didn't it hunny-bun?"

"Coco you were a bumbling mess on the first few dates." Velvet was greeted by a quick fist to the side.

"You are not helping my cause!"

"I'm sorry, was I meant to?"

"And besides," the blind boy continued, "I think I've got an idea for where I want to go with her tomorrow anyway."

"Atta boy Fox" Coco said, ruffling his copper hair. "Now, I want to just have a nice, relaxing day. How's that sounds, hunny?"

"Sounds fab. I'm still going to take a lap or two around the grounds though; pretty sure spending all day sat around after our little session yesterday is going to cause muscles to ache something fierce when you start moving again."

"And I'm going to get breakfast first, then I'll come back afterwards, might do some work, might give Neo a call later as well."

"That's a thing, how are you going to communicate outside of person-to-person? She can't call you, you can't really message her."

"...Good point. We'll figure that out later."

"Suit yourselves, I'm going to stay right here."

"No you're not. At the very least you are getting up and moving back to your bed so that Velvet and I can get ready to get breakfast and go for a run."

"Other than that, I'm staying right here."

"Deal. First things first though; Coco, please put some underwear on."

"Ugh, fine."

* * *

Neo always worked with music. It helped her relax and let her feel free. Every beat of the song she could do something with; on that cymbal crash she could finish stitching that pocket in, that long guitar solo was the perfect length for her to hold that material in the dip-dye, that ridiculously low note near the end would serve as a perfect bench mark to remind her about the hem she needed to finish soon. It also kept her mind free from distractions. Sadly, Scrolls don't last forever. They need time to recharge so that they can operate at maximum efficiency for as long as they needed to, much like people. And for Neo, part way through one of her favourite songs was not the best time for her Scroll to decide to call it quits. Honestly, if Neo knew that she would be able to get another one quickly and easily and that everything on her old Scroll would be transferred over then she would have smashed the thing in frustration. But she couldn't, so she didn't and instead was letting it charge nearby. This left her alone with her thoughts.

' _Why Fox?_ ' The question she asked herself so many times. It's not like Remnant was a world full of people so ugly that mirrors became outlawed due to their inherent nature to break at the sight of anyone, there were tonnes of attractive people everywhere. Even then, the less attractive ones were still good fun to be with.

Neo was Pansexual, in every sense of the word. Were they cute/hot/funny? Kiss 'em. That goes well? Get 'em in bed - doesn't matter if they're male, female or Faunus (though she personally didn't see the difference in most cases). She had plenty of experience with that.

Her first time was with a guy. Just a normal guy. No high-end businessman, no fully fledged Huntsman. Just a normal, 'Average Joe'. His name might have actually been Joe, she couldn't remember. She had a few more like Joe; some were definitely better than others. The last 'Average Joe' she had was so bad that she needed something else, someone else, anyone else. That's when she realised she didn't care who she went after, as long as they were better than him (which they all were).

Before long she had found an annoyingly attractive young woman going by the name of Riley. Soon after that she was in bed with Riley. The night was slow at first - neither had been with another woman before - but once that hurdle was crossed the rest of the night went great. After Riley she had something with a Lizard Faunus in Vacuo. She only realised he was part Lizard when they were making out and his tongue literally wrapped around her own. Fair to say, she avoided going after Faunus' for a while.

Then she met with Roman. She made a name for herself as a mercenary. She'd kill for money and she was good. She was better off than she had been on her own, perks of working for/with a high end criminal. In this time, she decided to play things more dangerously. She went after Huntsman and Huntresses, both official and potential. Funnily enough, Atlas proved to be the best place of the Four Kingdoms and Academies for that sort of thing. I guess having a strict military regime means that there are more things that are 'out of line' and thus more people raring for something a little dangerous. Dancing with death, getting intimate with a person who could be knocking down her door in a futile attempt to arrest her; that was an eventful evening - she'd never fought anyone whilst she was in the nude before but she wanted to try it again sometime, her opponents were distracted to high heavens and it was hilarious.

When Neo was in Vale she had very little luck with anyone. The Arctic Fox Faunus from the café broke her stigma from before and the draught. The night they had was the best she had ever had, and had the whole thing with Fox never happened she would have probably gone back there again. She liked the woman, there felt like there was slightly more passion that night, more like making love, than there had been before with anyone else where it seemed more like having sex. There were others who she just kissed but left it at that; Coco now being one to add to that quite expansive list along with the weird Lizard Faunus, and there were plenty more who she had gone further with as well.

But then there was Fox.

The thing with Fox had stretched out far longer than she thought it would; 2 months since they'd "died" and just a little bit less since she thought there was something with him. Under normal circumstances, it would be a week at best:

\- They look cute/hot **AND/OR** they're funny  
\- Follow and get them interested  
\- Kiss when the time comes  
\- Take it further if they feel like it  
\- Disappear from their lives

But Neo couldn't do what she normally did. There was something about Fox that was different. Granted, the fact that his soul contained the other half of a magical artefact that wants to be whole might make her more inclined to be drawn towards him, but she didn't feel that anymore. Nearer the start there was no question. But now, there was genuine affection there. There _had_ to be. That thing in the store, that was most certainly play fighting. She could have held him tighter so that he couldn't escape and, at the strength she was holding that headlock, Fox could have very easily broken free. Neither did what they could have done. Why? And the kisses, all of the little kisses she kept giving him on the cheek; why? They'd kissed before, they'd made out before. Neither had control over what they were doing when that started, but they had kissed. And Neo had kissed many people beforehand. Why was kissing him on the lips such a difficult thing to do?

A sharp pain flew through her nerves. She retracted her finger and shook it around, sending a drop of blood somewhere into the room. She looked down and saw the pin prick on her finger. She'd never done that before. But then again, she wasn't distracted by Fox when she'd done this before.

Were she capable of making sounds, she would have groaned in frustration as she fell backwards on to the floor.

' _Why Fox?_ ' Rather than let the question simmer away in her mind, she put down her tools and decided to answer the question outright. She closed her eyes and covered her ears with her headphones despite them not being plugged into anything, letting the only thing she could sense be the floor underneath her and her own voice inside her head.

' _Well for starters, the Parchment of Volentes. Without that, this probably would have never worked._ ' Not where she wanted to go. Refocus. ' _Why Fox? He is an attractive person. The scars are really quite cool, it shows he's the kind of person that can take a hit and still carry on. His hair's scruffy, but deliberately so and yet still clean. He's a Huntsman-in-Training, meaning he's a fighter and he is willing to lay his life on the line for the greater good. It means he's able to make split-second decisions, though clearly not about us... He's actually got really comfortable abs, I could have lay there forever if I didn't get hungry. He's blind. He's judging me on what I do and not what I look like, which is nice. His hands were so smooth despite the scars covering everywhere else. We can speak, which is a miracle in of... no, avoid_ _ **anything**_ _to do with that artefact, focus on Fox! Stop worrying about it, the artefact isn't making the decisions about him, you are! It's trying to force you to love him, but you've already made your mind up about that! You didn't need its help to know how you feel about him!_ ' Her eyes shot open and a single tear fell down her cheek. That was it, the self-confession she needed. That's why everything seemed so different this time around.

' _Why Fox? Because I'm in lo-_ '

The ringing of her Scroll broke through her thoughts violently. She wiped her tears away as she walked over to answer it. It was Fox.

' _Speak of the Devil..._ ' she clicked the answer button.

"Hey Ni, Fox here. Um... could you swap this to Video Call? I want to try something." An odd request, but one she wasn't going to ignore. She flicked through the settings and got it so that it was now a Video Call. Up popped Fox's face and the room behind him. He was still in his dorm, sat on his bed with no book surrounding him. Neo cocked her head, did that mean he'd already finished? That took him way less time than she thought it would. "Right, now can you see if you can talk to me through here?" Again, another odd request. "Say something specific though, something only we'd know; that way I'll know it's you and not Coco or Velvet playing tricks." She nodded, realising after she had that the boy couldn't see it. The woman focussed hard on Fox, imagining him right by her side as she thought of a question that she wanted to ask him. If this worked, she might get an answer now. Otherwise, it can wait until tomorrow.

' _Do you really love my smirks?_ ' There was a pause as Fox waited there. His face lit up as the message reached him moments later and he responded.

' _Of course I do Ni. I love them a lot._ ' The answer, as well as the fact that they could speak to each other over longer distances, made the ice cream girl beam. "I needed to test that just in case we needed to say something and we weren't near one another. I'm glad that worked, I really am. Otherwise, I'll do my best to keep it as simple 'Yes/No' questions for you. Starting with this: you still up for tomorrow?" Eyes of Heterochromia pink and brown looked over at the wirework mannequin. There it was, measured to the exact proportions she had measured for Coco so that when she was making her little present for her she didn't need the Huntress-in-Training to be there for her. That was her aim for the day, to finish that. Everything afterwards was a bonus. She turned back and nodded, all whilst speaking her answer in her head. "Great, I've got a plan for it. I'll be there early." In a moment of dread, Neo shook her head and almost cried the 'No' at him. "Why not?"

' _I'll come to you. Please. It'll be easier._ '

"Okay Neo. I'll wait here for you. Come round as early as you can after 8:30, I still want to give the girls their beauty sleep and Yatsuhashi will be back either really late tonight or really early tomorrow. Alright?"

' _Yeah okay._ '

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow bright and early then? Later Ni."

' _Bye. Fox, I-_ ' But the call had ended before the second word even reached him. Once the call had ended, Neo stared at the device in her hands for what seemed like a lifetime. She stared, hoping somehow his face would pop back on the screen just so she could finish the sentence she needed to say to him.

' _Fox, I love you._ '

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

There it is, the self-confession. And if you go back and look you'll see that this is the first time that those three words are actually _ever_ uttered in the story.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	18. Let's Start This One Right

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

' _Nervous? Why are you nervous? You did this two days ago, there is_ _ **nothing**_ _to be nervous about._ ' Fox paced slowly up and down the dorm room. Coco was up early, having done nothing yesterday her body naturally decided to kick her up early as punishment, Velvet lay asleep next to her. She had a cup of coffee, so she was somewhat fine about it. She sat on her bed watching her teammate pace, sipping away when she felt the caffeine wearing off.

"You know, I'm sure if you asked they would change the carpet so that there was a line there, you don't have to tread one in yourself."

"Coco, I'm nervous." Fox wasn't one to admit his feelings without coaxing. Coco got up to talk with him, only for her legs to ache something fierce the second she did. She both loved and hated how Velvet could be so right a lot of the time. Instead of getting up to see him, Coco patted the bed beside her and ushered Fox to sit down with her.

"What're you thinking about?"

"Us..." Coco _could_ make a joke regarding herself and Fox saying something along the lines of 'I'm flattered, but I have a girlfriend', but she was too tired to do so and she knew that wouldn't help the situation. If anything, I'd make it worse.

"You going to give me any more to work on than that?"

"It's just... I'm worried that I'll do something wrong. I'm worried I might say something wrong, or not say anything and that makes things worse so I try and correct myself and dig a bigger hole than I would have been in if I'd stayed quiet."

"And I'm worried that you snuck out and swapped brains with Ruby with how fast you're talking. Just slow down Fox." He did as he was told. "Why are you worried?"

"I'm just... I don't want to do or say something wrong."

"What do you think you ought to say?"

"Something, but I can't think of what to say."

"Good." He shot his team leader a puzzled look. "Of all the things that you could do to make things go wrong on a date, overthinking is top dog. Second's bringing your parents, but that's beside the point. If you're over thinking and planning everything you're supposed to say or do, you're not enjoying the moment. Take it from me, Coco nowadays would cringe at what first, second, right up to fourth date with Velvet Coco was like. I did then what you're doing now; I treated it like a mission. Planning everything, right down to my responses and conversation starters. But I was lucky, because this little bundle of adorable really liked me and was willing to be patient. I finally stopped and let the day take us where we wanted it to, and I fell into the deepest depths of adoration as a result. I saw Velvet relaxing just as I was, I said things that felt natural rather than forced, I did things even I wasn't expecting to do, all because it's what my body did in the moment. Neo may be the same as Velvet in this regard, she may be patient and willing to wait for you to stop fart-arsing around and live the date, or she may decide 'Fuck it, not worth my time' and disappear forever. I know it'd probably be better if you experienced that cringe-worthy stuff yourself, but as your friend who is really happy that you two are doing this, I decided to intervene and save you from yourself." The boy nodded in agreement to everything Coco said. Normally out of missions that wasn't the best thing to do. Now, she was being genuine and sincere and for that he'd take her words to heart. He went for a hug but was interrupted by a gentle knock on the door.

"Well..." he said, bracing himself and standing to go to the door but was caught by Coco's hand grabbing his wrist.

"Listen, if you do what's right as it happens, good _will_ come of it if you just give it time."

"Okay. Thanks for that Yatsu."

"You're we- hey! I'm trying to be nice here."

"I know, I'm pulling your leg." With that, he opened the door. Stood there was Neo. Not Bubblegum, nor Cherry: Neo. "Hey Ni."

' _Morning Fox. Sleep well?_ '

"Not really. First date, little nervous. But I've had a pep talk with Coco."

' _I_ _see_.' - " _Morning Coco._ "

"Morning Neo." She was too tired to Sign. "Nice to see you again as opposed to that amazing costume."

" _Yeah._ " - ' _Shall we?_ '

"We shall. Later Coco; thanks for the talk."

"Anytime Fox." The boy ran back to his bed and grabbed his Scroll and his rucksack, and then headed off into Vale with Neo, their collective First Date officially beginning.

"...you lowballed..." came a groggy voice from the bed.

"Hmm?"

"I recall it being date nu..." a heavy yawn broke her speech "date number nine, not four."

"Well, thank you for keeping quiet about it until _after_ he'd gone."

"Sure..." she rested her head again. "Now sleep."

"Can't. Morning coffee's in my system."

"Then let _me_ sleep."

"That, I can do."

* * *

' _So, where are we heading exactly?_ '

"If I told you, that'd ruin the surprise wouldn't it?" The couple walked through the peaceful morning streets of Vale. Many people were already on their way into work, so it'd be about ten minutes before the first big rush of people of the day kicked in. However, Fox knew that the place he was taking Neo was already open so they could avoid the rush. "All I will say is that if it doesn't have what I wanted it _may_ ruin the plan I had for today."

' _No back-up plan?_ '

"Maybe; but I'd much rather go with Plan A."

' _Fair enough._ ' They continued down a few more streets, walking close but not holding each other. Merely having the other close was enough for them, the occasional brush of the other's hand on the back of their own all the contact they needed. Fox led Neo round one last familiar corner before approaching the door of their destination. He opened it and held it for her, a gesture she appreciated. As they entered the store, the bell on the door behind them rang once again as a voice called from out back.

"Just a minute!" Neo remembered that Roman was supposed to come here once. He didn't in the end, so Mercury and Emerald came instead. It didn't end well. A figure came through the doors behind the counter carrying a large pile of books.

"Welcome to 'Tukson's Book Trade', home to every book under the sun. How may I help you?" The Faunus, whilst not Tukson himself, bore a striking resemblance to the man with his dark hair, hazel eyes and pale complexion. One big difference was that he was much less intimidating that the previous owner in size, that and he work more muted green as opposed to the burgundy of Tukson. That still didn't stop them from both being strong enough to carry such large piles of books, or offering the same level of customer service the store was known for. "Oh, hello again sir. Nice to see you back. May I ask what it is you're after today?"

"Yes, I was wondering if you had the book I requested come in yet."

"It certainly has sir. One moment please, I'll grab it for you." The man left through the doors once again, leaving the couple alone.

' _So, Tukson's. That's the big surprise?_ '

"It's part of the surprise. Seeing as what I wanted is in, it means the rest of the day is going to go fine - weather permitting."

' _Oh, so the rest is outdoors, is it?_ '

"It is. But I'm not saying any more."

' _Aw, you're no fun._ '

"Yes I am, you're just annoyed you're not getting what you want right away."

' _But you fail to realise Fox; I_ _ **always**_ _get what I want eventually._ '

"Do you know?"

' _Yes, I do._ ' She turned to square off against him, the height difference making the conflict look more like a child arguing to a parent than anything else. ' _So tell me. Now._ '

"Ooh, them's fighting words Ni. You sure about this?"

' _Why, you scared you might be bested by a girl Fox?_ '

"Nope," before she had a real chance to react, the boy had dashed behind her and got her in a hold across the chest and shoulders that kept her firmly in place. "I'm just worried you'll embarrass yourself in front of all these books." Neo struggled against his hold, but it was all fruitless. In all honesty, she didn't mind being held like this too much, but she couldn't show she'd just given up - he'd hold that against her. Before she had a chance to continue her struggle, the owner came out with a book in hand.

"Here you are sir. New in late last night, only saw it this morning." Fox dropped the hold so that it was more of a hug from behind. Neo hugged his arms, happy that he was doing so.

"Thanks, how much?"

"I'm under strict orders from Tukson himself sir. He told me to refuse payment from a young girl under the name Blake Belladonna, and a blind, copper haired boy named Fox Alistair. Enjoy your book sir, and thank you for visiting Tukson's." The couple smiled at the shopkeeper, then left with his new book in one hand and Neo holding his other one.

' _Free books. You must go there fairly often to get that discount._ '

"Not as much as Blake does. She's been in there more times than I have, and I've been at Beacon an entire year longer than her. No, Tukson knew that finding books in braille was a daunting task so he promised he'd do his best to cater for my needs and he'd done so all this time. It seems even though he's on holiday that gesture of goodwill is continuing, though I didn't realise that he'd been giving them to me." Neo knew that he wasn't actually on holiday, rather he was dead. Fox didn't need to know that.

' _Yeah. So where're we going with your new book?_ '

" _My_ new book? No Neo, it's _our_ new book. I take it you enjoyed my story?" She thought back to the book she'd blitzed through about five days ago. Whilst she had done it out of spite for Fox choosing an inanimate object over her (something she still hasn't 100% forgiven yet), she did find herself enjoying the words on the page.

' _I did actually. But what's it matter to you?_ '

"Well I asked for a very specific book. I asked for Year 7 of that series, the final book. And seeing as how we have a whole day to kill and the weather is holding for the moment, I thought you'd like to sit down with me and we read the story together. I read one chapter while you listen, then you read the next while I listen and so on and so forth." Neo's eyes widened in joy and she hugged the boy, a corner of the book accidently making its way under one of her ribs and stinging a little but not too much.

' _That's so sweet Fox, I'd love to do that with you._ ' She shot him a smile and he returned it.

"Shall we?"

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

Due to a work related venture (I'm going to the head office for three days worth of training for my new position), I'm not going to be anywhere near Wi-Fi from Wednesday evening until Sunday morning to upload the story; as such, **Senseless** Chapter 19 will be withheld until the following week, October 5th, so as to not get out of my scheduled upload times.

I'm sorry, I don't like disappointing all y'all, especially as you've given me nearly **8,000 story views** up until this point (holy shit!) and I couldn't be prouder that this little story about an obscure pairing could gain so much attention in the time it's been going.

Also, I now have an _**AMAZING**_ piece of cover artwork for the story, commissioned by FJ + Tikoriko. Check them both out on DeviantArt and Tumblr for more of their glorious works.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	19. From Emeralds to The Dirt

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

The Emerald Forest was teeming with Creatures of Grimm. You'd get your bog standard Beowolf and Ursa, along with a few Death Stalkers here and there. Fox knew this. Fox also knew that Grimm wouldn't bother you if you posed absolutely no threat to them in their own territory, unless you were intruding on their nest or colony, then you'd have no chance. But here was a safe zone. The vast majority of Grimm activity was a long distance away from here, and even so this area was pretty secluded. The tan skinned student had come prepared; out of his rucksack he'd pulled a picnic blanket and a hamper filled with various little snacks for them. He also brought a small cushion so that it wasn't too uncomfortable sitting down for ages in one spot.

"So, do you want to read first or would you like me to go first?"

' _I mean normally I hate it when a guy does his thing before me, but I think I'll make an exception this time._ ' She winked at the boy as he got the book out of the rucksack as well, which he just smirked at. He seemed to be getting much more comfortable about that topic with her. She sat between Fox's legs, the back of her head resting on his abs. Fox held the book on her chest, then opened it to the first page and began feeling the braille and reading it to her in his head; it made sense as they could just go through it as they both normally would with the added benefit of the other person hearing their thoughts as well.

' _*Chapter 1: The Dark Lord Ascending._

 _The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then, recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction._

 _"News?" asked the taller of the two._

 _"The best," replied Severus Snape.* Bastard..._ '

' _I hate him too Fox, don't worry. We can kill him in our minds later._ ' She assured him with a glance up towards his face. He looked down at her and couldn't help but smile, her Aura making her shine like a pink, cream and brown sun. That deceivingly innocent face could turn on a dime and kill you without hesitation, but he loved the look she made when she was genuinely smiling at him. He didn't care about the fact she could probably kill him if he did her wrong, he only cared right now that she was safe and happy with him, just as he felt with her.

' _Sure, sure._ _*The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge. The men's long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched...*_ '

The pair of them sat there for ages in each other's company. When every chapter ended, the other would take over reading. Sometimes they'd offer opinions on what had happened; other times they'd just continue the story on, but what was consistent was the fact they would hold on to one another. Sometimes, a little tighter when something shocked them, or when something bad happened that they felt sad about. Their contact would break only for respites to go and grab food from the rucksack. As the day drew to a close, Fox was taking his turn at reading a chapter. It'd reached a point where his inner voice became a natural storyteller; rising and falling with the words like a wave. But after Ron had said to Harry that * _"All is fair in love and war, and this is a bit of both"_ *, he finished sentence to look down and see what reaction that brought, and that's when he realised that the breathing of Neo had grown a little less frequent but much more regular. She had fallen asleep in his embrace. Fox noted the page number and closed the book, then stared at the sleeping woman in his lap.

"Wow..." he mouthed to himself, fearing that if he thought anything she might hear it and comment later; whilst he didn't particularly mind that he would much rather avoid the humiliation. She was so peaceful when she slept, her chest gently rising and falling almost mesmerised Fox into a trance. He felt so lucky that Neo was his... or was she? "Shit," he mouthed "I didn't ask again. Tomorrow. First, time to get you home." He felt a yawn creeping up on him, so he let it as he gently shifted Neo so that he could pack everything up, resting her on the grass when he needed to get the blanket. Once everything was packed up in his rucksack, Fox hit a dilemma. Should he wake her up and return with her being a bit groggy, but knowing that at least he'd be there to make sure she was safe? Or does he wait until she's awake - however long that may be - and head back then when _he_ may be sleepy? Neither seemed particularly favourable to him. Of the two options of 'Wake' and 'Wait', Fox chose 'Walk' - an unforeseen third option he'd decided was effectively the best of both. He lifted Neo up so that she was in the sitting position, then put the rucksack on her back. Once it was secured there, he proceeded to lift her onto his own back and carry her piggyback. She was so light, but that's what happens when you're one and a third foot smaller than the person carrying you, who also happens to be a Huntsman-in-Training and therefore is physically quite strong as is, excluding his mastery of his own Aura.

Fox only remembered thinking about where he was going to drop Neo off when the girl in question instinctively held him tighter as strong and cold gust of wind blew around them. Carrying Neo didn't feel taxing in any way at all, it almost felt natural. Rather than wake her, he again talked to her in their heads.

' _Ni, it's Fox. Can I ask you something?_ '

' _...Mm hmm..._ '

' _Where're you staying? What street?_ '

' _...Cloak Inn... seventeen..._ ' Her inner voice was so airy when she was caught in her dream that Fox couldn't help but smile at how cute it sounded. Now he had a destination to go to.

When he arrived at the Inn, he explained that she was tired and that he'd just be making sure she was in her room and safe, a statement that got him a dirty look from the Innkeeper along with him muttering something to along the lines of "here long enough" and "her room" - he couldn't make out the rest. Fox took her up to the room she'd mumbled and used her key she was given to open the door. The sight that came next shocked Fox.

He always made a habit of bursting his Aura out as he entered a room, that way he could get a decent layout of the size and general placement of everything. Normally, it'd take about two bursts to completely get a sense of the room, and it could be knocked down to one if he used his semblance as well. Today, was not the case. In a single burst, Fox saw his Aura radiate out, then hit the walls of the room. It was small, about five metres across, six and a half metres deep with an even smaller room off to one side that was for the fridge and sink. Fox braced when he saw a human figure in one corner, but relaxed somewhat when he didn't feel the Aura of a person or the darkness of Grimm, and he also realised that it was Neo's wirework mannequin for Coco. How was this woman so damn talented? Across the floor were various large bits of fabric and material that Fox remembered picking up a couple of days prior. The bed was a single bed pushed right up into the top corner of the room with what seemed like a very basic mattress and duvet.

Fox's eyes darted around the room, then glanced at the blissfully unaware woman currently sleeping on his back. This was where she was sleeping, how she was living. He was in shock, how could she do this to herself? Granted, she may not have had any other option, Fox understood that. But going back to what the Innkeeper said Fox was pretty sure he pieced together his annoyed mumbling. This had to have been where Neo was staying ever since she and the criminals she was associated with had parted companies - for the better, in his eyes - some two months ago. No wonder she didn't want Fox coming round to her, she didn't want him seeing how she'd lived.

He lay her down on the uncomfortable looking mattress and quickly looked around the 'room' for things. As he had a look through the fridge-freezer, he gave Velvet a quick call.

"Fox, that you?"

"Yeah, it's me Velvet. Listen, where are you guys at the moment?"

"Oh, Coco and are I in the dorm. Yatsu still hasn't come back, he was supposed to have returned earlier. Guess he wanted to stay with family a bit longer. Why'd you ask?"

"Because I'm going to need to ask you and Coco to do a little bit of rearranging. I'm at Neo's place right now; she's been staying at The Cloak Inn for the past two months."

"The Cloak Inn?! That's not exactly the best place in Vale she could have chosen."

"I can see that, but I assume it was a budget thing. So yeah, I'm here and I don't want her to be staying here tonight. She's asleep at the moment, she kinda crashed about an hour ago back in the Emerald Forest and I think that she'll be out for the rest of the day now. Can you rearrange the room a bit so that there'd be room for me to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor?" There was a bit of a pause between Fox finishing his sentence and Velvet restarting. He was taking a breath in in preparation to speak again when the Faunus spoke through the line.

"Fox... why don't you just share a bed instead?"

"No Velvet!" He replied almost in a sharp whisper. "I am not doing that. She can have my bed, I'll sleep on the floor."

"Then you might as well sleep at The Cloak. You're putting yourself in basically the same situation that she's in right now."

"I am not going to sleep in-" Velvet wasn't giving him any chance to refuse or counter, there was only going to be one outcome.

"Fox listen. You like Neo right?"

"...um, yeah."

"How much?"

"I guess that I..." he sighed, knowing the Faunus would pry the answer out of him one way or another. "A lot. In these last couple of days, I might have even considered using the other word as well."

"And Neo feels the same." Fox accidentally misinterpreted what his teammate said.

"I'm not sure if she does to the same degree as I do."

"What? No, Fox, that wasn't a question. I'm telling you, Neo feels the same way. She's told me and Coco a few times."

"Okay."

"And let me tell you, she will appreciate it. That night when Coco got really drunk and she staggered her way into my bed was one of the best night's sleep I had ever had. And waking up in the morning with Coco sleeping right beside me was so fantastic that I would have given anything to make it happen again. That's why I was willing to wait for Coco to stop messing up with her dates, because when she eventually got it right I knew that those nights where we were in each other's arms would be a prize. You walked with Neo from the Emerald Forest, what's the harm in walking back to Beacon? She will appreciate it." Fox glanced back at Neo, who was actually squirming a little bit at the uncomfortable mattress underneath her. He had hoped it looked worse than it felt, turns out it'd probably be the inverse.

"Okay. For her, I'll do it."

"That's great Fox! I'll tell Coco to lay off you two when you get back tonight."

"Thanks Velvet. I'll be there within the hour." He pulled something out of the freezer, then gave a small smirk to himself. "But if you wouldn't mind, could you maybe do a little bit of shifting in the freezer. I've got a plan."

* * *

One by one Neo's senses stirred.

First, her sense of touch. She felt warm and relaxed. The mattress felt so much nicer than it ever had before; which was a miracle considering the mattresses were probably worse than the floor, but she never wanted to risk sleeping on The Cloak Inn floor. She must have been really tired to be appreciating the mattress.

Next was her hearing. She heard breathing that was not her own, one really close to her. In the time she had spent here, never had she realised how paper thin the walls seemed to be in this place. Thank Oum she never brought Fox here, they'd never have any privacy if they wanted to, the mattress wouldn't help either. Heck, _it'd_ probably moan more than either of them - which wasn't a big ask on her part when she thought about it.

Third, smell. Her room smelt different this morning, it smelt... cosy? How can something smell cosy? But here she was, in a cosy smelling room. The aroma was much more pleasant than it had been before; maybe the idiotic Innkeeper had finally done some work in the building for once and given each room a nicer, more appealing smell.

Her fourth and final sense she needed came; her sight. The roof of the room was so much taller than usual. Maybe she was on the floor? No, too comfy for the floor. Tired mind playing tricks on her, that was it. She turned to her left to look at the time - 3:28am - only to also see two more beds. She never remembered asking for a communal bedroom. She swapped round to see what was on her right flank, and that was when everything pieced together. The mattress was so nice because it wasn't the mattress she normally slept on. The breathing was because there were multiple people in the room. That cosy smell was the faint smell of coffee. And the increased height of the room was actually because this was a Beacon Academy dorm room. The catalyst for her conclusion? The fact that Fox Alistair was sleeping right next to her in the same bed.

Her eyes glowed with a pleasantness that she seldom felt. There was only one other time she felt like this and that was the morning after her night with the Arctic Fox Faunus, only the feeling here was amplified tenfold. Neo silently shuffled across and draped an arm around the sleeping student next to her, the action causing her heart to flutter a bit. A sleepy moan of content from him caused that flutter to turn into a full on skipped beat. Neo fought past the irregularity of her heart and leaned in to Fox's body, letting the warming sensation of being cuddled up to him in his sleep take over her body and get her to drift back to sleep once again.

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

 **{END OF PART 2}**

* * *

Well, we've come to the end of that arc as well. It's been such a great journey to go on so far, and there's more where that came from. That's right, I've got plenty of ideas for upcoming chapters and I hope you stick with me through the rest into the third arc of the story. I can tell you that, based on my storyboard of the next arc, this next one will be a shorter arc that the last two by at least two chapters. But I plan to have a big team fight scene, so that ought to fill a void - I know it wouldn't be a 100% replacement, but it's what I've planned.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	20. That's How I Want To Wake Up

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Getting up in the morning was usually a thing he didn't really like doing. Who did? You're leaving your bed - which by this point is really, _really_ comfy - to go and spend the day doing other things away from it. And today, well... Velvet may have been right. Fox woke with the normal glow of the sunlight shining in his broken vision, but also a rich, pulsating glow beside him of Neo's Aura. He looked at her and saw her face shining in the darkness that was his norm, a grin plastered to her face like a mask. Fox saw her and couldn't stop his heart from beating faster and a blush crawling up his neck, staining his cheeks with a rosy hue.

"Wow..." he mouthed; the second time Neo had made him do that in as many days. He followed his gut and did what he thought was right in the moment. The tan skinned boy leaned over and pressed his scarred lips on the forehead of Neo with a smile; her skin was so smooth, but he'd never realised that until now. The couple of times they had kissed he'd noted the fact, but never before had he truly appreciated it. Now there were no obstructions to stop them from feeling what they truly feel, and Fox couldn't be happier.

"Mornin', lover boy" Coco called from the dresser on the far side of the room, fully clothed for the day and tapping an invisible watch on her wrist. Fox lifted himself up and glanced at the clock on his bedside table. 9:46am, probably the latest he had ever slept in in his entire life. "Long night of passion made you tired?"

"Didn't Velvet tell you to lay off?"

"Yeah she said, and I quote 'Let Fox and Neo have some time in peace tonight, they deserve it.' So I did. Now is not 'tonight' anymore, is it? And that means I have an evening's worth of catching up to do" Fox was so fixated on Coco now that he failed to notice Neo's eyes shoot open effortlessly; she had been up for some time now but pretended to be asleep as Fox stirred to see is reactions.

"Go ahead, do your worst. I'm happy to lay here with Neo until she wakes up, and nothing you can say will hurt that."

"Really? Nothing at all?"

"Nope, nothing at all."

"Dust damn it... looks like I owe you some Lien then Neo." Fox's head turned to see what he thought would be Neo sleeping in the bed, but instead it was her wide awake and grinning like a mad-woman as she sat up, busted.

' _You went "wow" when you saw me._ '

"How long have you been awake?..."

' _Hours._ ' Fox let out a mildly-panicked, high-pitched cry that honestly sounded akin to a Velociraptor more than anything else which both the girls in the room found hilarious in their own ways.

"Yeah, sure, go ahead. Laugh at my misfortunes Coco."

"If you insist," she chuckled "but I've got to meet Velv on the Sparring Field, she doesn't want me getting rusty on her."

"Yes, fine just please go."

"Of course. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Coco, we've both walked in on the aftermath of your sex-capade, we both know there's not a lot you wouldn't do. That statement doesn't hold much weight anymore." The gunner stepped back slightly at her teammate's remark.

"You did?"

"Yup."

"Oh, fuck me."

' _Okay then._ ' Fox shot Neo a look of sheer bewilderment at her comment. Continuing as if that hadn't happened, which for her it hadn't, Coco finished.

"Anyway, I'll see you in a bit guys." Then she was gone, the door clicking behind her and leaving the pair still in bed alone in the room.

"What the hell?!" Fox cried after he was certain Coco was far enough down the hallway to not hear him yell.

' _What? She's hot, and she offered._ '

"First, no she didn't. Second, she has a girlfriend!"

' _But come on Fox; Coco Adel. Are you telling me that, if she wasn't already in a relationship and she offered that opportunity up, you'd say "No"?_ '

"Well no I wouldn't pass it, but that's-"

' _Ha! See, I win. Next time she says that I'm not answering in my head._ '

"Neo what about us?" The ice cream girl froze at that remark. What _about_ them? She turned to face the boy who she was sharing the bed with face on.

' _We've never really said, have we? It's just kind of been... dates._ '

"Exactly; if you're doing this to get with Coco and then disappear then you can just leave now."

' _No, it's not that at all. I just..._ ' she looked away from him, almost embarrassed to tell him her story. But she knew she could trust Fox, and maybe that will help him trust her more. ' _I've never really told anyone this, mostly because I couldn't. I haven't had the chance to stay in one place for long. The line of work I chose comes at a cost. A killer for hire means that at times I have to take a hit for the person paying so that they stay in the clear to hire my services again. I have a lot of people who want to catch me, even more who want me dead. The fact that I was known to get jobs done quick meant I was sought after by people across all four Kingdoms and the towns and villages in between._

' _And as such, I don't settle down. I can't. I put myself at risk every day I stayed in one place - after a week I would move on regardless, though I've never really failed anyone who employs me so that week was all I needed. I couldn't settle down, so I put myself out there. Whilst I was at work I'd look for someone. I'd get close. I'd kiss them. If that went well, I went home with them and we'd go a few rounds under the covers. I'd disappear from their lives. Rinse, repeat._

 _'Then we died Fox; and I felt like my life had been a game and someone hit the reset. I found out soon after that whilst the hospitals wrote us both off as dead first, they signed paperwork to nullify that statement. I stole mine and destroyed it. For all intents and purposes, I am officially dead. Anyone who had access to official records - a few of my enemies do - would see that I was dead and call off the search for me. I went back to the people I thought I could call friends, but they had abandoned me at the first chance they got. They believed me dead and it was good, so I ran away from them and spent the-_ ' Neo second guessed herself, wondering whether Fox should know. Well, she'd said this much. ' _I spent the night with the Arctic Fox Faunus from the café we went to._ ' Fox looked at her and nodded, clearly he felt something had happened between the women in the past, but chose not to speak up on it.

' _Normally with me it's just sex, but I felt something with her, same sort of thing I'm feeling with you. I felt a connection, a deep emotional connection._ ' She took the blind boy's hands as tears started welling in her eyes, all the emotion built up from years of emotionlessly killing target after target coming back in one big fist of feelings. ' _It's what I've wanted for so long. With Coco, what we "have" is what I've always done; all I'm missing with her is the last stage. With you, I want to take things slow, not cram everything done into a loveless night of passion. We've got something different. I want to be with you because I-_ ' How can words jam in your throat when you can't even speak? This was ridiculous, it wasn't like the words were foreign to her, she'd said them before. But Fox took the first step and caught Neo in a powerful but loving embrace.

"You didn't have to say all of that Neo. Let your tears flow, you'll want to hear this." She took his advice and let the waterfall begin, though she felt like life really didn't want her to say those three words again. It was weird, she sobbed through her shoulders and her eyes overflowed with tears, but with no sound she thought it felt... off. Like there was something missing. But she realised that something _always_ feels off when you don't have a voice. Once the tears had subsided, Fox finally released the embrace and lay his hands on Neo's arms, his rough fingers painting patterns on the skin of her forearms. "Everything you'd said took a lot of courage to say, and I'm thankful that you wanted to share it with me; clearly you trust me enough to do so."

' _It's nothing, really-_ '

"No, but it is. 'I've never really told anyone this'. The trust that you put in me is amazing and I honestly feel so happy to know that you feel like we're at that level of understanding that we can do that. Listen, being blind is a bitch; just as I imagine being mute must be. But being mute, you can still experience everything around you, you just can't vocalise your thoughts. I physically can't experience it, and that makes me so sad." He reached on hand up to touch the cheek of the woman opposite him. "I'll never see exactly how beautiful I think you are. I see your Aura and how it moulds to your shape, but never _you_. And I want to." The copper haired boy took a long and purposeful breath through the nose; he'd been meaning to say this and now it felt right in the moment. "Because I want to love how you look just as I love your Aura and what you do. I love you Neo, and I want to love _all_ of you." There was stillness in Team CFVY's dorm room. Neo sat there with her mouth agape. Worry crossed Fox's face, then panic. "What? Did I say it too soon? Oh shit, I said it too soon! Oh Dust, I fucked it up! I'm so sor-"

' _Fox!_ ' He was tackled to the bed by Neo in a big hug. Why was he always getting tackled to the floor by women? Not that he was complaining much. ' _Oh Fox, thank you! I love you too. I love you so much and I've been meaning to say that for ages, but every time something got in the way. You saying it first was fantastic, it meant I could follow. I love you._ ' She cupped her hands behind his head as his hands slowly made their way to hug her middle. ' _And don't worry about not seeing me. What you do more than makes up for your lack of sight._ ' Neo allowed the boy to sit up, their arms remaining exactly where they were. She looked into his milky white eyes whereas he stared at where her Aura indicated her eyes should be. They inched their way closer, feeling that the other wanted the same thing as them. An intimacy where the action could be replicated by anyone, but the feeling behind it could not.

They were but inches away from one another, feeling the heavier breaths of their partner's anticipation on each other's lips when Fox's Scroll buzzed and broke their mood.

"Son of a..." Fox took the still-vibrating device in his hand and recognised his teammate's unique ringtone sounding. He reluctantly answered and shot a playful comment at him, whilst the intention behind the word was still there. "Someone better be dying Yatsu, I was in the middle of something."

"Fox, there's no time to explain!" The tank sounded out of breath and spoke with a hushed whisper. Yatsuhashi was never like that.

"Yatsu? What's going on?"

"My village has been attacked. A Nuckelavee. This is the only respite I've had where there's been some signal to send this message. We need the villagers out of here and this thing gone. Get the rest of you here now! Bring trained Huntsmen with you if you can, this thing is tough. Hurry!" The Scroll cut dead. Fox looked at Neo.

"Neo, your weapon's still in my locker, right?" She was still trying to process the information, so she simply nodded. "I need to get changed, head to the Sparring Field and tell Coco and Velvet. Meet at the landing pads closest to the Field, I'll send my locker there to get our weapons." She nodded again. Fox leaned across and placed a quick kiss on her forehead. "Go, I'll be there shortly. We've got no time to lose!" One final nod and Neo shattered into pieces, leaving Fox in his dorm room by himself.

' _Stupid cock-blocking Damsel-in-Distress_ ' he thought, grinning at the thought of the 7 foot tall Yatsuhashi in a dress. The fact his potential first proper kiss was cut off before it happened was a little irritating, but he couldn't stay mad if they were going to fight a Nuckelavee; they were near-mythical in status, undocumented in terms of everything except name. All Fox knew was that it was unimaginably dangerous - stories tell of no one ever walking away from one alive - and it'd need the team's full attention to take it down. Four minutes after the call, Fox was washed. Six minutes after the call, he was running out of the door in his combat gear with four in ear radios in hand, the landing pads on the Sparring Field side of the school his destination. "Hang in there Yatsu. We're coming."

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Time to get the third arc of this story underway. As previously mentioned, this one's going to be much smaller in length compared to the first two arcs, but that doesn't mean I'm skimping out on anything, it just means I'm focussing my efforts on what's going on rather than stretching it unnecessarily.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	21. An Urgent Need of Backup

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message** **'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

The attack was strong enough to knock Coco back. She almost lost her balance, but regained it as she skidded backwards. Letting her natural momentum stop her moving completely, she pushed off the floor and sprung back towards her opponent. With a high swing of her boots, she aimed to catch them off guard, but they were anticipating that. For them, that was predictable; they'd move backwards to get away from it so she'd swing again, they'd retreat again until they were in a corner and the match would be won. As predicted, the Faunus jumped back to avoid the first and second kick aimed at her head. The third time it happened, Coco was caught unawares. Rather than jump back like she usually did, Velvet ducked under the kick and eased forwards closing the gap between them and attacking the one leg that was supporting all of Coco's weight at the moment. In an instant the leg was up in the air, then her body was thrown down to the ground hard, her Aura spiking up to cushion the impact, but it still didn't lessen the fact that it hurt like hell.

The Faunus kneeled on her sparring partner's chest and let out a satisfied but focussed "Yield"; she knew that if she lowered her defences, the opponent could still attack. Keep your guard up until the battle is over, even if it seems you have won beforehand. Coco lowered her sunglasses as she stared into the eyes of Velvet, conceding to the girl.

"I yield."

When CFVY were first together on initiation, Velvet was a strong fighter, but was still weaker than her three teammates comparatively. Her trump cards over them were her agility, her semblance and smaller stature making her that little bit harder to hit. But as time went on, each of those grew less and less; Fox's agility specifically soared once he'd let go of his fears of being prejudiced against for being blind, and his speed soared too. Her semblance kept the field interesting, but in sparring matches against her own team they would have most likely been with her when she took photos of people's weapons and stored their likeness in her camera, so they'd know whose weapons she could be mimicking and therefore would have a strategy to deal with them. Especially their own weapons. So when everyone else's strengths grew and their weaknesses improved to lessen them, her strengths dwindled and her weaknesses grew ever more present, leaving her in her own eyes the weak link of Team CFVY.

So she dedicated herself to eliminating that problem for herself. She often got up early to go on runs to further improve her already heightened stamina (though her bedroom antics with Coco helped with that too). On top of that, she'd spend lots of time in the Gym focussing on close ranged physical attacks like punches and kicks, improving the strength and speed she put behind them; it stopped her from relying solely on an opportunity to use her semblance and made her more viable in close range. At times, Velvet had even _asked_ to be retained in detention by Goodwitch so that she could do her best to work on her own predictability and anticipating the opponent better - a risky move in anyone's books, even Ozpin's. But if this match was anything to go by, everything she did was paying off in spades and she was becoming one of the more versatile members of the team.

"You're doing great Velv, I've never seen you do that before" she groaned, the pain really setting in as she hauled herself off the grass.

"Well if you know _everything_ I could do, sparring matches become predictable and one-sided - I try as hard as I can, yet you still beat my ass."

"You don't moan about me beating your ass normally" she teased.

"I'm trying to have a serious conversation here Coco."

"You're just getting defensive 'cause you know it's true." In one solid movement, Coco jumped forward again hoping her distraction techniques would help to catch her partner off guard and let her get the first hit in or just outright end this fight in one. Sadly for the fashionista, Velvet was always the quicker on her feet of the two as she dodged to one side and let her attacker roll out of her attempted surprise assault. "Well, I see that didn't wo-" Coco's hands flew to her head in a panic as she felt her own hair. Dark brown eyes stared at the Faunus, who strutted away from her, twirling a beret on her index finger. "How in the...? When?"

"I saw and heard that coming a mile off Coco. Maybe _you_ should stop my Professor Goodwitch's for some extra-curricular detentions." She finished twirling and placed the hat on her head, rabbit ears still protruding from in front of where it rested, and winked at her girlfriend. "Might help you be a little quieter in the future; not that _I_ mind." How could Coco stay mad at someone as amazingly attractive as that, especially when she was wearing her stuff and saying things like that to her. The two toned hair of the team leader blew in the breeze as she jogged over to the Faunus and took her headpiece back from her.

"Are you trying to make me drop everything and have my way with you right here on the field?"

"No..." she scoffed, the sarcasm oozing from the words she spoke. "Why on Remnant would I do that?" The girls wrapped their arms around one another; Velvet around Coco's neck, Coco around Velvet's waist.

"Because you are a naughty little bunny" she replied, booping the girl's nose and causing her to scrunch it up in an instinctive reaction.

"Maybe I wouldn't be, if I didn't have someone like you pushing impure thoughts into my innocent little mind."

"Pfft, you are the worst."

"And you love me for it."

"Yeah, I do." They drew each other closer as their eyes closed and their lips met. They didn't stay like that for long, as a stone was thrown towards them. Velvet felt it coming through the air and pushed her girlfriend away suddenly as she too backed away, the tiny bit of rock falling right past where their faces were a second before. "Alright, who has the balls to... Neo?" The woman was running at the two students, her chest rising and falling noticeably even from a great distance, she had been running from the dorm to get to them. The three of them met and Neo spoke as quickly as her hands could manage.

" _Sorry about the stone. Yatsuhashi called Fox, his village is under attack by a Nuckelavee Grimm. He needs us now, we need to go!_ "

"Woah hold on, a _Nuckelavee_?! I thought they were just a Grimm from Urban Legends?"

"Apparently not Velvs; though that does give us a reason as to why Yatsu's been gone for longer than he said."

" _It sounded urgent, so let's go! Fox said to meet at the landing pads._ "

"Right, let's do this." Velvet and Neo nodded at the team leader, her natural instincts kicking in upon hearing the mission. They raced to the landing pads and saw a metal container falling from the sky landing near them. A few moments later, Fox came running up to it and grabbed his own and his girlfriend's weapons and hurried to catch up with them in an aircraft. They gave directions to the pilot and took off fast. As they travelled, they discussed their approach to the mission, among other things.

"I've heard stories of this thing back when I was a child Coco; they said that it kills everything and everyone who gazes upon its face - no one survives to tell the tale."

"If no one survives Fox, then where'd the stories come from?" The remark stumped the blind boy before he realised that she had a very solid point. "Though Fox does bring up something very important; there are no documented sightings of a Nuckelavee, only what comes from these Urban Legends and stories. Even then, what it can do is still clouded in mystery. As such, we have to take extreme precaution, even more so than when we face Alpha Grimm en mass; this thing could be even worse than that. The fact that Yatsuhashi has been there for days suggests that it's not something we can take lightly, so we're going to need to land far away from it and approach on foot. Hopefully in that time we'll get a chance to survey the area and see what it's like. Neo, how far can you go when you shatter, or whatever you call it?"

" _Generally, it's anywhere that's out of the line of sight of the person or thing attacking. At best when I control it correctly I'd say about 70 metres._ "

"Good, I'm going to need you to go with Velvet. Velvet, other than myself you're the only one out of the rest of us who can do it, so do you mind going with Neo on the scout? We need to be as quick and quiet as possible, so you two ought to be perfect. You up?" The girls nodded at the leader. "Great. We need to know what we're dealing with in terms of size and scope of collateral damage. If that thing starts getting aggressive, I'm going to need you to get the hell out of dodge; I don't want to lose team members before we know what we're doing and going up against. Even now, I'm lucky that Yatsuhashi is still alive; I intend on keeping it that way. I've already had one teammate die on my watch this year, I'm _not_ having a second." She took a breath to compose herself, not realising she was feeling the pressure of this sudden mission before it even began. "Knowing him, he'll be staying with the masses and keeping them safe, which is good. Our first priority is making sure that they are out of harm's way. Then, and only then, should we try and engage the Nuckelavee. Avoid any contact with it for as long as humanly possible. Fox," she faced the boy as she spoke "you can still sense Yatsu, right?"

"Of course. It may be a little weaker than usual, but I still can."

"Then your role is simple in concept; get to Yatsu. We need him helping as soon as we can, the more of us there are sooner rather than later, the greater our odds. Be careful though, the Grimm's an unknown. I want you to get Yatsuhashi with you and try to escort as many of the villagers out and away from the fight as you can."

"Understood."

"Great, then let's get ready to go; we'll be approaching the village soon. Even if this is split into two parts I want this mission done quickly. Evac definitely needs to be speedy, disposing of the Grimm takes as long as it takes. Velvs, I want you report back to me in person when you've got intel, then go and help with clearing the village. Neo, stay close to her. I don't doubt you're more than capable, hell I _know_ you are, but in this case I want to make sure I have everyone a call away at all times."

" _I understand Coco, I'll stay close._ "

"Perfect." The fashionista moved through the ship towards the pilot and spoke as loud as she needed to make sure he heard. "Set us down on the South side as close as you can get. We need to approach on foot."

"Got it. Good luck on your mission!" The man lowered the craft to about a metre or so above the treeline, then opened the doors to let the two couples jump down to the ground. Velvet was the first to point out the pillar of smoke coming from the village.

"We need to get there fast" she observed in a panic. The mage tried to run there straight away, but was restrained by her girlfriend grabbing onto her arm.

"Hold on Velvet! We can't just rush into this thing, remember? And we absolutely need to remain calm. For all we know this Grimm could sense negativity much greater than any others we've seen or heard of." Sunglasses were lowered as she stared at the village in the distance, the smoke blowing in the wind enough to hide most of the still-standing tower near the centre. "My vantage point will be the tower. I should be able to see most of the village from up there, or at the very least get an idea of where that Grimm is and keep an eye on it. Neo and Velvet, for intel I want you to deliver from the roof next to it, don't bother climbing to the same one. If one roof falls, I don't want 75% of us out of commission in one fell swoop. Fox, get to Yatsu and get to him fast. He needs our help just as much as we'll need his." Their nods were all she needed. "Alright then, let's go!"

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

I am perfectly aware that these first few chapters of this essentially mini-arc have been a little lighter on substance than what you may be used to, but with what I have on the books for a couple of chapters' time, I hope it massively makes up for that deficit of words and story content. It's not my intention to cut things short, but where I write sometimes, it comes to a natural point and at times that natural point is 1.9k words in.

Even so, I hope that these chapters aren't unfulfilling in terms of length; back at secondary school and to a lesser extent college, 2k - 2.5k words were the most comfortable length of transcript for me whenever I wrote things of my own accord and the _only time_ they would be longer than that is if I was actively forced to do so on things like essays for my subjects or a script for my Drama and Theatre Studies A Level.

Also, on a slightly different note: ' **Senseless'** had officially hit **10,000 Story Views!** That is such an achievement for me and this story, so thank y'all so much for reading this, and hopfully you will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

Also also, I passed my driving theory this morning - first try, bitches! I'm one step closer to freedom of movement!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	22. Hai-no Hana

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Fox shot left with Coco. Their tasks were to get _directly_ to a certain point, so Coco always suggested - and the team mostly agreed - that they should find an _indirect_ route into the village, then make their way to their objectives from there. It added a level of unpredictability; if there were people expecting them to come directly down the middle, throw them off by advancing from a flank. The pair of them found a low wall of on the South-East side of the village and jumped in. They had to treat this mission as if they were up against Human/Faunus hostiles due to the team's uncertainty of the creature's capabilities. Once they were inside the wall and made their way to the end of the first building, Coco quickly gazed around the corner to see what was there. She saw no people, no Grimm but plenty of destruction; she was in two minds whether to be thankful for that.

"Everything's clear Fox. Find Yatsuhashi as fast as you can. If you see other people, take note of where they are and go back afterwards - sorry but getting Yatsu will help us later on, we'll need his strength."

"I get it Coco, don't worry. This isn't an official mission, you don't need to worry about the 'rules' so much. We'll all do what you say because you are our leader; it's your mission, you call all the shots." Playful Coco reared her head for but a brief moment as she replied to her teammate.

"Alright then... drop your pants." Fox gave Coco a frustrated look and sped off to fulfil his mission. Coco stuck close to the buildings as she edged herself closer to the large tower near the centre of the village.

"I heard that Coco" Velvet mentioned disapprovingly through the comms.

"I was just playing with him Velvs, it's nothing."

"... Neo asks if you want a minute to rephrase yourself." Recalling her previous statement, the beret wearing girl pondered, then shrugged.

"Nah, tell her that I know that you know what I meant. Now focus you two."

Fox felt his partner's Aura radiating from what felt like a bunker on the North side of the village. Just his luck, but it meant that he could do a little bit of recon himself. Every street he passed was either filled with nothing but residue panic or the corpses of the former residents; thankfully not many of the latter, but still unfortunately more than zero. The feeling of a corpse to him and anyone else with that kind of semblance was that the person was now missing something. The body where they were still occupied that space, but there was no Aura there and that was what unnerved Fox the most about corpses, the lack of once was. Having been "dead" himself, he could only imagine the bliss of true death would be as opposed to the seemingly unending limbo that he and Neo were in. They came out the other side better people, and now with each other, so... every cloud.

Irregular clopping brought the student to a grinding halt. His Aura was masked in an instant as he used one of Yatsu's many breathing techniques to calm himself down, a technique that consequently also affects a person's Aura as well. He remained where he was as the beast, clearly the creature of Grimm they would need to take down soon, plodded past him. Fox dared to look, but he did burst his Aura ever so slightly to get an idea of the thing. The thing was big, almost rivalling Alphas in size. And it was unhinged. Even for Grimm, this was a rarity. Fox stayed calm and still, letting the clopping pass. But it didn't. It stopped right near him, as if it felt something. There was a faint whinny, implying that it was at least part equine. There was also a small crack of what sounded like bones. Fox shuddered at the sound, trying his best to not let his emotions show; his body didn't want to play ball though as the wave of dread hit his extremities hard as his fists clenched and sweat started forming on his forehead. The hooves (he assumed they were hooves) turned towards him and stopped. There was an eerie and uncomfortable silence as Fox stood there facing away from the beast, not knowing that it would attack until after the attack had begun. The same hooves started sounding fainter and fainter as the creature walked away from him, not sensing anything of note. Taking his chance, the boy flew across the street and the following one before collapsing to his knees as the dread caught up to him. His breath heavy, he tried contacting the rest of the team.

"..." Fox only realised after he'd opened the channel that he was still too out of breath from panic to actually form coherent sentences, something both people on the comms noticed.

"Fox?"

"Fox, what's happening. Talk to me."

"Nuckelavee. East, North-East. It's a big Grimm, sounded like it was a Horse."

"Got it Fox."

"...Neo's asking after you Fox."

"Tell her I'm alright, it's just a bit of worry from being a few metres away from a Grimm that apparently no one has ever fought and survived."

"You're being sarcastic, aren't you?"

"I'm worried, and if my worry is coming across as sarcasm then yes, I am."

"Zip it you two, focus on the mission." Coco was to the point. "I'm at the tower now Fox. I think I can see something over where you said you are. You're right, that thing's big; I can spot parts of it protruding out from above the buildings. Velvet, where are you and Neo?"

"We're over on the far West of the village."

"Right, I have eyes on where I think the Grimm is, it's on the East. If you spot any civilians, you can get them out of the village and into the tree line surrounding. Tell them to make their way round to the South side as far away from the village as they can, we know where the creature is so we might as well make use of the situation."

"Understood Coco."

"If I call you again, it's because it's getting closer. Pull back and get them to hide if you can when you hear that."

"Got it."

"Fox, keep heading for Yatsu. I'll map out the path that thing's taking."

"On it." Messy copper hair flowed as the boy ran towards the ever-brightening glow of his partner's Aura in the distance.

Coco sat atop the tower and got a layout of the land around her. There was a wedge of her surroundings she couldn't see due to the pillar of smoke obstructing it; hopefully her team and that Grimm wouldn't go behind it at all or, if they did they don't stay behind it too long. The village itself was fairly small in comparison to others in the area. Going off information she and her team learnt in their Geography lessons about Vale and its surroundings and Yatsuhashi's found recollections of the village he grew up in, Hai-no Hana had a tower right near it's centre with everything else spidering outwards from that point. Everything was fairly evenly spaced as well, with the furthest point being about one thousand metres away from the centre of the village forming almost a perfect circle of protection around it. On top of that, most of the buildings (that remained standing) were no taller than three stories high; the vast majority being two, some even only one. In contrast to that, the tower Coco was atop seemed to easily be about four or five stories above the floor - which meant that there was nothing obstructing her line of view and she could basically see the entire village from up here. It was a wonder how no one from the village had thought to put a watchtower up here. But then again, they wouldn't have needed one before now.

She sat up there for ten minutes before she heard anything else from anyone. "Coco, we're coming in." Upon hearing Velvet's message, Coco hopped down to the smaller roof of the large building the tower came from and waited for her teammates to appear on the adjacent roof. Velvet wasted no time in letting Coco have all the information she and Neo had gathered. "There are very few entrances to the village - there's the one myself and Neo came in by, the main one just shy of North and a possible third one on the East side; we didn't check that way due to you mentioning the Grimm was there."

"That I did." She placed her two fingers in her ear as she opened up comms for Fox. "Fox did you catch that?"

"Sorry, no."

"There are only two main entrances - North and South. Was there anything on the East side that you noticed?"

"Nothing I could make out. Yatsu or one of the locals may provide a clearer answer than we could."

"Good call." The leader's attention focussed back on the pair near her. "Did you find anyone on your travels?" Neo shook her head as Velvet spoke the reply that matched. "Alright then, I need you to head to the South West side of the village and perform a basic sweep for life. Ask anyone you come across who may know of any alternative routes out of here besides the main gates - if this thing's as big as we think it is then I want to give it as little chance as we can to follow. If possible, get them to show it to you. Call back when you hear anything new Velv." The girls nodded and took off towards their new objective as Coco made her way back up to the top of the tower. On her ascent she heard a deep sound resonating in her ear.

"Team CFVY, this is Yatsuhashi." A grin crossed her face when she heard that.

"Welcome back Yatsu."

"It's good to be back, Coco." The towering student was kneeling down inside one of the buildings nearer the outskirts of the village with many people inside. Fox did his best to go around and attend to people's wounds where he could, channelling minute parts of his Aura in to them to aid recovery. He didn't want / couldn't afford to overdo it with the healing as he was well aware of the fight the five of them would have on their hands, and the more Aura at his own disposal, the better. "Listen, things aren't looking great. There are a lot of people who are injured in here, and those that aren't hurt refuse to move from the sides of the ones that are in an effort to stay positive and balance out the negativity. We're all pretty sure the Nuckelavee knows we're all here and it's almost toying with us - it senses the negativity in here and as time moves on that is only going to grow and it is only going to draw nearer. A few brave villagers have tried multiple times to draw its attention away from the building to let people in here escape for proper medical attention elsewhere or to get reinforcements, but sadly their sacrifices were in vain and I have refused to let anyone else leave since."

"It sounds bad."

"It is. And it's faster than it appears, I think it could make it from one wall of the village to the other in about two minutes. You couldn't outrun it."

"Yatsu's right Coco, there's some people in here I wouldn't want budging. Evac's a no-no until we can get some proper help, and that probably won't come until that thing is gone."

"Shit..." The girl now stood atop the tower once again, staring at the tall moving mass of black and white that must have been the Nuckelavee as it moved its way around the village. "Velvet, did you catch that?"

"I did, yeah. What's your plan?" The fashionista surveyed the land once again and spotted a large open patch of land on the West side of the village, a decently sized square of open space almost begging to be an arena.

"Velvet, you and Neo need to make your way to the square on the West side of the village. I'll be with you shortly; we need to defeat this thing. Fox and Yatsuhashi, I'm going to need you to lay some breadcrumbs for that thing. I want the fight as far away from those people as we can make it. Yatsu, you know of the Western Square right?

"Yes. I can see your plan Coco. How should we get it there?"

"Like I said; breadcrumbs. I'm going to need you to get its attention and get it to follow you. Yatsu, if you go on ahead and let Fox do the luring it'll give you a bit of a head start to get here."

"Great... live bait. My _favourite_ role in the team. How did you guess?" Fox deadpanned that entire remark.

"Alright big guy, get your ass in gear and meet us at the square. Fox, hold fast until I give the signal, then move away from the injured civilians, get its attention and run Westward like there's no tomorrow!"

"Already died once Coco; it doesn't faze me anymore."

"...Neo's telling me, and I quote: 'Stop being a dick about that, you're not immune to death and still owe me something anyway'."

"The kiss can wait Neo!"

"She says 'If you're dead, the conversation we had would have been pointless too'."

"Easy lovebirds, we'll need five of us to take it down. Yatsu?"

"Already on my way there."

"Perfect. I'm dropping from the tower now, I'll meet you all there. Fox, on my mark."

The emptiness of the square resonated with the mute and the Faunus once they'd arrived. Sure, the village had been empty all the time that they were there, but this was a whole new level of empty. Before, footsteps echoed off the walls of the abandoned and/or destroyed buildings they walked past. Now, they disappear into a wide open space of nothing, the air around them taking the sounds away from them. It was eerie to say the least. The two girls did a quick glance around the square and took in everything - buildings surrounding it that weren't completely destroyed were no more than three stories high, so a low level fight could be expected. The ground was completely flat, save maybe the odd brick that jutted out from the floor slightly on the paths. There was a grassy area with flowerbeds near the middle as well. The flowers were currently blooming, but Velvet assumed that these flowers probably wouldn't make it to see the next day due to how destructive they could be as a group when they fought. All in all, this was essentially a larger training area.

Coco found her way to the square with relative ease, arriving seven minutes after her transmission. Seeing the other two girls there, she called out to the rest.

"Guys, I'm at the square now. Fox, sneak out and get at least a couple of streets away from where the townspeople are all being holed up and wait for my command. Yatsu, where are you now?"

"I am at the village centre, only a few streets away from the square."

"So you could be here soon?"

"Very soon."

"Alrighty then. Fox, disregard my last order; once you are far enough away and know where that creature is, get its attention. Keep on your toes, but stay near to the main roads that lead to the centre tower and then follow the road opposite towards the Western square. We'll all be there. It's up to you to get it to join us."

"Understood." He cut the feed off and breathed out heavily. He wasn't exactly pleased that he was doing this; a very large, ground-based Grimm that could cross two kilometres in as many minutes, making it faster than basically everyone here today with the exception of Neo when she used her semblance, that he had to lure to the rest of his team... oh well. He recalled from the museum that dying wasn't too terrible of an experience. What shook him more was the fact that he was confident in himself back then and yet he died. Now that he was unsure... let's just say Fox believed that it didn't bode well.

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

The battle is right around the corner, so expect Team CFVY & Neo vs. The Nuckelavee next week! Here's hoping that it will be a lengthy and worthwhile action filled chapter, one even longer than this one.

I really hope you're all enjoying the story so far - it is coming along so much despite it being focussed around such a left-field pairing like [Neo x Fox], and the support I'm getting from it is mind-boggling taking that fact into consideration.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	23. Cries of the Damned and the Damning

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message** **'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Tan skin snuck its way down the sides of buildings as he did his best to get as much distance between him and the place where everyone was remaining. There were easily hundreds of people in that building, all looking to remain as calm and as positive as they could - a task that was very difficult considering the injuries some of them had sustained. He knew he needed to give them every opportunity to survive, and getting this thing away from them was step one. The clopping of hooves echoed in his ears once again. The mass of darkness passed through his vision from right to left and he held his emotions in check as it did so. As the sound resonated further and further to his left, Fox left the safety of the alleyway he was in and eased his way out, staying low. He used his semblance and got a proper feel of the beast. It towered over him, the horse body easily a storey to a storey and a half tall, and it looked very strong as well. It was now or never.

Fox pushed his Aura through his feet and flew himself upwards and towards the monster. With some mid-air manoeuvring, his feet landed on the creature's hide at the same time his elbows dug backwards and drove the blades of his weapons into the creature's dark skin. An inhuman screech followed that almost knocked Fox off balance, but he kept his composure somewhat. He lifted the blades out and pushed himself off, landing with a roll and he began running West. There was no time to look around anymore, his mind was set on "Get to the rest of the team, now!" and nothing was going to stray his thoughts. He focussed on the four lights in the distance that he knew were his three teammates and his girlfriend. Each time a foot hit the floor, he pushed harder against it. If this thing was fast, then he needed to be faster. After a few seconds, there was almost a gallop heard from his rear as the Nuckelavee gave pursuit. Fox held the lead he'd made for all of thirteen seconds before the sound of Grimm hooves and cracking bones grew ever closer with each step.

The four people standing in the square lowered their stances as they heard the hooves grow closer. A Greatsword unsheathed, a Gatling gun unfolded and started whirring slightly. They waited for their moment. The hooves grew closer but no one could hear footsteps to go with it. Neo's expression grew more and more worried as the lack of footsteps approached.

She soon realised why.

With what sounded like a heavy attack on the Grimm's part and a cry of pain, Fox was sent flying out from behind the Eastern buildings on the side, way across the open space, landing past the group and just past the grassy area on a path on concrete bricks. He wasn't sure what hurt more; the force of the kick, the impact on the floor or the fact that he just missed a patch of grass that might have lessened the force of the second option. Eyes glanced at where Fox had flown from and for the first time they saw the creature in its entirety. There was a horse body that almost stood higher than a few of the buildings around them, its mane smoking with a smoke that they usually saw upon defeating a Grimm. Its front two legs made it look like it had more clawed feet than hooves. There were two arm like appendages hanging from a limp black mass on the creature's back, the claws at the end twitching every so often with a sound of crunching bone. Once the main body stopped moving, the black mass spasmodically twitched into life. The spikes on its back grew to prominence and the horned humanoid head stared at the five. Its skin-less torso jolted at every movement it made, a bone chilling sight if ever there was one.

This was what a Nuckelavee looked like.

This is why any written recounts of it were nothing but jargon.

This thing was nightmare fuel incarnate.

It screeched as if emulating a battle cry, then ran at them.

"Move!" Coco shouted. In an instant four bodies jumped out of the way of its charge, the leader jumping and retracting her giant weapon back into its more compact form, all while the smallest of them dashed backwards to grab her boyfriend and then promptly shattered out of existence as clawed feet crushed down on the position the pair were moments before. Fox shook the pain out of his head and looked up at Neo, her multi-coloured Aura glowing pleasantly, a few trace, wispy tendrils on her arm reaching out and clasping at tendrils coming from his own, slightly dented Aura.

' _Fox, are you alright?_ '

"I'm fine..." the pain shooting through his core from the impact said otherwise. "Okay, I hurt basically everywhere... other than _that_ , I'm fine."

' _We need to get you-_ '

"Back into the fight." Neo knew that he'd interrupted her, knowing full well what she was thinking. Before she had a chance to try and refuse, Fox continued. "Listen, that thing packs one hell of a punch. We all need to be there, working as a team to take it down."

' _I'm not part of your team._ '

"Can you take orders?"

' _What? Of course I can._ '

"Do you trust Coco, Velvet, Yatsuhashi and I?"

' _Yes!_ '

"Congratulations, you're the fifth member of Team CFVY. Going to need to re-jig the name a bit though." His light-hearted nature calmed the ice cream girl, knowing that he was willing to do this. She helped him up and they threw themselves back into the fight.

Whilst they were having their conversation, Coco, Velvet and Yatsuhashi were running rings around the thing trying to get an idea of how it fought. When Fox and Neo re-joined, it didn't hesitate to show them. Its clawed arm stretched as it went for Coco, the girl barely stopping before the arm flew past her face and into the building near her. She, along with Velvet, looked at it in terror.

"Okay... that's new." With a flick, its arm flung out catching her and Yatsuhashi, and knocking them into another wall. Failing to hit the Faunus with its first strike, the Nuckelavee shot its second arm out towards her, previous momentum carrying her into its path as it slammed her into the floor, a cry of pain involuntarily flying from her lips.

"Velvet!" At once, the tank moved towards the beast, Greatsword dragging along behind him. The sound the Grimm's body made when it bent its body backwards to look at the oncoming threat was enough to make stomachs churn. Both its elastic arms came back to their normal length as readied itself for the attack to come. It fired an arm at the boy, but he was ready and he spun round slightly and swung the sword out catching the Grimm's skin and getting it caught in it. The howl that came from it was inhuman - well, it _was_ a Grimm so that explained that away - the sound of pain even more unbearable to the five people attacking than the pain the creature itself must be feeling.

With a shudder and a wave of something flowing down it, the arm grew bony spikes from it where the sword stuck, forcing the giant blade out and away, its owner with it. There were a few moments of solitude when Yatsuhashi landed as Coco finished formulating another plan.

But the words couldn't come fast enough.

With cracks echoing everywhere, the spiny protrusions on its back grew longer and more menacing, as did the horns on its head. The glowing mouth that was almost sewn shut now had its thread breaking and the full gape to be revealed, its red eyes turned into slits as this happened. It let out another roar, only this time the sound and intensity was so much greater than the first time. It was uncomfortably loud for Coco and Yatsuhashi, and painfully loud for Neo and Fox - what with their lack of one sense their others heightened ever so slightly to compensate. But an even worse noise came from within it.

A familiar sounding cry of agony.

A female voice they all recognised.

Velvet.

Coco's head turned to see her girlfriend clutching her head as the pain shot through her like blades. She was a Rabbit Faunus, a being with hearing so acute they could pick out a whisper at 50 metres when conditions were right. Now, she had the equivalent of continuous explosions 10 metres from her head. She cried out as the sound continued, hoping her cries would cancel out the pain she was feeling. Her screaming was only weakening as the sound continued from the Grimm. When it finished, Fox felt the Aura weaken inside Velvet as she collapsed from immense pain, the scarlet crackle of lightning on her body indicating that it was no longer protecting her physically and was instead shutting down to so that it could focus all its energy into helping her heal and stop her from dying. Coco's cry was almost as painful to listen to as her partner's, screaming her name and breaking her role as team leader to instead be scared-out-of-her-mind girlfriend. So long as Coco could get to Velvet and get her away, she'd be a lot better. The Nuckelavee targeted her first though. Its clawed arms came up and attempted to slam itself down on its now unconscious prey. Another cry of the Faunus' name as the fashionista realised that she would be there in time to save her girlfriend from being crushed to death by the thing.

There was a shatter, followed by a second, then finally the sound of an arm hitting something. Yatsuhashi and Coco stared as Fox and Neo held the arm up to stop it killing their friend. In the length of time it took for the creature to swing its arm, Neo had teleported to Fox, then teleported both herself and her boyfriend in between it and their unconscious friend, blocking the attack. Coco continued running towards the thing as she scooped up her unconscious girlfriend and ran away as far and as fast as she could go.

"Keep it distracted!"

"Right!" The shout from Yatsuhashi as he jumped up and plunged his blade into the creature's hide was all Coco needed to know that they had her back. Neo and Fox moved as a unit, one person's actions being mirrored by the other almost instinctively. As the giant arm lifted when it recoiled in pain, the pair dashed underneath it and took a slash and stab at both its underbelly and its hind legs before shooting out the other side as it collapsed slightly. The three of them stood in a line as it rose again and rotated to stare them down.

"Anyone have any plans?" Fox asked with heavy breaths.

"There are still too many things that we do not know about the creature. Maybe we should wait for Coco to get back."

' _No time. Draw it away from Velvet, we need Coco. I have an idea._ ' She dashed forward as Yatsu reached out a hand to stop her. Fox just caught it and explained.

"She said she had an idea. We need to get it further away from Velvet." Yatsuhashi, whilst a little bit apprehensive as he didn't hear or see Neo suggest the plan, agreed and turned with Fox from where they stood to the beast. The creature tried to crush her with its hooves but Fox and Yatsuhashi were already nearby to stop it and distract it again. They got its attention, they started drawing it away from where it had rested. Neo shot past it and halted when she got to Coco who was cradling unconscious Velvet in her arms with tears running down her cheeks as she mumbled and cursed herself.

"C'mon Velv, c'mon, wake up for me. Please Velv. Please! I was stupid and careless, it was my fault. Don't scare me Velvet I need to-" A small tap on her shoulders shook her as she was expecting the only things to contact her were Velvet and the Nuckelavee. Instead it was Neo, a sight she breathed a sigh of relief at. Neo signed her thoughts to Coco.

" _We need you back in the fight. I have a plan, it's risky but it may give us the range advantage if it works._ " Unable to word, Coco simply nodded, gave her girlfriend a caring kiss between the ears that both said "This Faunus is mine" to other Faunus and "Please, be safe" directly to Velvet, and lay her down to rest. She wiped tears away from her eyes as her brow furrowed.

"I like it. Let's kill that thing!"

" _Right, I need you to get its attention. Shoot at it, force it to attack you._ "

"...I don't like it so much."

" _Coco once we have the range, that's it; the battle is ours practically. It's the only way I can think of, and I need the other two for things anyway._ "

"Fair enough," she said, running out away from Velvet as she transformed her bag into its Gatling gun form once again. Fox and Yatsuhashi were keeping the Nuckelavee busy, jumping from side to side and avoiding its attacks. Without warning, there were suddenly lots of bullets flying at the creature's back and, by extension, the two students. They jumped out of the way as the Grimm spun its upper torso around jarringly fast to face the source of this hail of metal. There were only two people in this team who could attack from range. One was Coco with her Gatling gun. The other was Velvet when she used her semblance to mimic a weapon with gun functionalities, however she was currently out of commission. Fox knew that he wouldn't be able to wield a firearm due to his blindness and while Yatsuhashi _could_ , he opted out in favour of a much more up close and personal fighting style. Neo seemed to be the same as Yatsuhashi, although her ability to essentially teleport almost rendered her lack of a firearm obsolete. _Almost_. That left Coco to do all the gunning, and she had a lot of bullets to make up for everyone else's lack of them, so she really didn't mind.

The creature threw an arm at the ground where Coco stood, but she hopped out of the way of the clawed appendage as is caused a nice crater in the ground where she once was. As this happened, she heard a familiar click and saw a flash of light from one side of the creature. Neo was... taking photos?!

"This is _not_ the time to be sight-seeing Neo!" Coco yelled, firing out another wave of bullets at the creature. It did very little damage, merely impacting the skin and only really made it angrier. As the rounds impacted the skin, there was another click and flash of the Scroll camera. "NEO!" The woman genuinely didn't care, she was almost in her own little world. She smiled and waved at Coco, whose vision went red from rage. ' _One turn,_ ' she thought, ' _and I could point this thing right at you and put a sizeable hole in your Aura!_ ' She was snapped out of her fury at the woman by another hand slamming down just short of her, the monster had misjudged the space and failed to close the distance properly.

"Yatsu!" Fox called, earning his partner's attention. "Neo says that next time it makes a slam for Coco, try and take its arm. I'm going to try and pin that claw to the ground to make it easier for you." The tall boy nodded as burnt orange and black blurred off to one side, advancing fast on the creature's left. Yatsuhashi readied his Greatsword and ran towards it. True to form, the Grimm swung and arm down to try and catch Coco. She'd tried to avoid getting it near Velvet, but every dodge she made inadvertently edged her closer. This swing was going to land dangerously close to her. As the claw impacted the ground, Fox leapt from the side and pinned it down by jamming the blades of his weapons through the black skin and partially into the concrete below. He did his best to cover his ears at the terrifying noise of pain from the creature whilst still keeping the arm stuck, Nuckelavee cries were painful. There was a click and flash pointed directly at the humanoid face. Coco noticed how the creature was going for another attack aimed at Fox to get him off and to free its left arm, but there was another cry of pain as a Greatsword cleaved the pinned arm off in one powerful swing of the blade. The overstretched arm fell to the ground with a crash as black smoke started bursting from the wound. *Click, Click, Click!*

The monster pivoted round to focus solely on Yatsuhashi now; he was a big threat to the Nuckelavee, he took its arm. Fox looked at Neo as she spoke to him.

' _Fox, I need you to get it rearing up, expose its underbelly if you can. Try just getting really close, that worked last time._ '

' _Sure, but what's actually the plan here?_ '

' _You'll see_ ' she winked with a sly smile as she jumped in towards the fray. Fox followed her lead and got really close to the front legs of the beast. Knowing that they were within stomping range, the Nuckelavee reared itself high, exposing its underbelly. *Click!* The hooves came crashing down onto Fox's weapons as he struggled to keep them from hitting him. *Click!*

Bullets rained into the side of the beast, throwing it off balance. Coco stood there and let it have everything she had. Fox pushed away the front legs of the beast and started working on the belly, jabbing and slashing causing cut after cut to appear on the monster. Yatsuhashi once again brought his Greatsword back for a powerful swing, the blade neatly cleaving through the rear legs and bringing it down, Fox narrowly missed getting crushed - an action the tall student failed to completely think through before he took it. He was caught off guard by the remaining arm of the Nuckelavee stretching and knocking him away into a wall. Whilst it did that, Coco ran up and jumped on its back and fired repeatedly into the crook of the arm, ripping it out of its joint through the sheer number of bullets tearing through such a small space. Another howl of pain as the upper body slumped, armless but not necessarily out for the count yet.

Yatsuhashi fell to the floor, landing on uneasy feet. He slowly edged his way back to the monster. For all intents and purposes, the thing was defeated. Neo casually walked up to the thing as it roared in her face her parasol twirling all the while. She stood there unfazed, then took out her Scroll one last time. *Click!* Grinning, she shut the parasol and with one fluid movement, pull out the blade hidden in the hilt and thrust it deep into the skull of the Nuckelavee. Now, it was truly dead; the black mist slowly seeping from the skin and the body turning flaky and blowing away in the wind.

Neo looked back at the remaining three members of CFVY and smiled. Coco was having none of it.

"Okay, what the _fuck_ was that all about?! You were taking _pictures_ whilst we fought that thing!" Neo backed away ever so slowly; this was the first time any of them had seen Neo look scared of someone and that knocked a little bit of sense into the dual haired team leader. "Just... explain. Please." The girl nodded, signing away and speaking to Fox in his head as she did so.

" _I just thought, seeing as there were no accurately documented sightings of a Nuckelavee, I'd go and take some photos and get it published so that people in the future know what to do to stop them from getting hurt."_ Coco's eyes visibly widened from behind her sunglasses as she remembered that Velvet was still lying around somewhere. She ran off to find her, taking Yatsuhashi along to help. That left Fox and Neo alone.

"You were taking photos? I was wondering what that *Click!* was..."

' _Like I said, we could give these to someone so that there's an official record of what it looks like, acts like and how it attacks. Then we can at least have some idea for future reference._ ' She looked out to the two members of Team CFVY as one carried the unconscious third in his arms whilst the other held her hand. ' _Such as, "Faunus' with sensitive/acute hearing should take extra care due to its sonic screech in its second stage" or something._ '

"Y'know, I knew there was a reason I started falling for you."

' _What, besides the fact we have something attached to our souls?_ '

"Yeah: you truly care about others. You've spent so long hiding that, but deep down you are the sort of person I knew existed in the world but very rarely saw."

' _...really? Sight jokes?_ ' She giggled, echoing his exact thoughts from the end of their unofficial date.

' _You love 'em, don't deny it._ ' He too echoed her words, also jumping to his inner voice as well.

' _Just as much as I love you._ ' Neo eased her way closer to him, her eyes resting on his lips.

' _Sap._ ' He quipped back, smirking the kind of smirk Neo usually wore.

' _Shut up._ ' They were tauntingly close to one another, about as close as they were when Yatsuhashi called through for assistance yesterday.

' _Make me._ ' That was it, the push they both needed. The pair finally closed the gap between them as their lips met. Neo felt the roughness of his lips from both the scars and the fact that he was a little dehydrated from being part of the first documented case of defeating a Nuckelavee. He felt her lips against his and caught the faintest taste of ice cream. Which reminded him... But for now, he focussed on how natural it felt being with her, and how all his worries were fading away in the moment.

As their lips parted and eyes slid open, they looked at one another and felt happy; happier than it felt like they'd ever been in their entire lives. As they took each other's hand and walked to the remainder of Team CFVY, Fox's memory jogged from earlier.

"Hey, so if Neo's going to be part of the team, officially or otherwise, we're going to need to have a new name aren't we." Coco looked at him, her eyes puffy from crying at the sight of Velvet again.

"Yeah, though I may have beaten you to the punch if you were going to be doing any thinking regarding the name."

"Oh yeah? So what would this five person team be called then?"

"You haven't figured it out? Team CFVYN {Caffeine}"

"I like it." The booming voice of Yatsuhashi came quite quickly, as if he'd already heard the idea before.

"Me too. What do you think, Ni?" He looked at his girlfriend as she stood there, mouth agape in shock, a tear pooling in the corner of her brown eye.

' _I'm part of a team..._ '

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

And there we are, everything has come to a head in this chapter - they battled the Nuckelavee and won, and the focus pair's relationship has finally come to a head with their first kiss 23 chapters in. I know I've been teasing that kiss for a while, but I like to keep things interesting and not have it be easy all the time.

A much slower chapter next week, me thinks.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is much appreciated


	24. Walk and Talk

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message** **'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

' _I'm part of a team!_ ' If Neo could shout, she would be doing it right about now. The way that Fox recoiled slightly at how loud the voice in his head spoke and the fact that she jumped about like an ecstatic bunny even made it seem like she was anyway. Coco saw that and it reminded her of the first time Velvet involuntarily started to binky at something exciting, arguably _the_ cutest thing she had ever seen. " _I'm part of a team!_ " She signed, making sure her friends - no, her new teammates - knew what she was thinking.

"Yes you are Neo; Welcome to Team CFVYN. As we do not have the luxury of Little Miss Scarlatina's presence, I suggest we all head back and make sure that she's okay first. Then, we can move on to the Coco Adel Mandatory Enrolment Games - CAME Games, for short." Neo watched as Yatsuhashi physically squirmed at the mention of these 'CAME Games', that made her all the more excited to play them. She gripped Fox's arm in an iron grasp from sheer joy, stopping only when he faintly muttered "Ow" at the discomfort.

"First though Coco, we need to go and tend to the villagers. Some of them are in need of medical attention, and along with Velvet will need to be on the first airships away." Yatsuhashi was always matter of fact when it came to things like this. He could have his fun moments, but he knew how to behave when the time came. Coming off the end of mission high she'd put herself on, the dual haired leader focussed on the remainder of the task.

"Good point, I'd actually forgotten about them - we came here with getting you out as main priority, killing that thing as second _then_ dealing with casualties as third. Right, someone needs to call medical airships to here. Get them to land in the square on the East side of the village then we can get those in dire need loaded on first and fast." She glanced down at Velvet who she knew wasn't top priority, there were probably people in much worse conditions. But for her, _no one_ is more important than her little Easter Bunny. "Fox, can you make the call?"

"I can, sure."

"Good, get on that. Then you two lovebirds can shoot on ahead and make sure the critical ones are loaded on first; we're going to take a little bit longer, need to make sure Velvet's going to be okay." The new couple smiled as a sign of acknowledgement, then walked off back to the East as Fox pulled out his Scroll to call for medical Evac in Hai-no Hana. The two older members of the team looked at their teammates walking off, Yatsuhashi sighing at the sight.

"Wouldn't have pinned you as a sigher Yatsu. Enjoying the view?"

"Not enjoying so much, more - I am happy for his happiness. As I am for hers. Both of them are broken and scarred in some way, yet they seem to love each other no matter what. I also like the fact that she learned to read braille just for Fox. It is quite endearing."

"That it is." Neo's hearing, whilst not Faunus-levels good, could still make out what they were saying from the distance away they were. Hearing them talk about her and Fox behind their back in a positive way was so reassuring. She knew that she could trust these four, they would do anything for her just as she'd do...

' _Fox..._ ' her thoughts stopped her in her tracks.

"Neo, what's up?" The woman put her finger to her lips, gestured to her head and then kept walking. She could tell when they were going to be listened to and even if Velvet was unconscious that doesn't mean she'd stay that way. ' _What's wrong Ni?_ '

' _Coco's dress. It's still at The Cloak isn't it?_ '

' _Should be. Do you want to grab it on the way back and show it to her?_ '

' _Fox, I've been with you the entirety of today. You **saw** how far along I was when you went there yesterday._ '

' _How did you know I went there?_ '

' _My semi-conscious mind knows what that poor excuse for a bed feels like. You never forget that feeling..._ ' she shook her head at the memory of the mattress, if you could even call it that. ' _That's a job for tomorrow then._ '

' _Maybe not. See CAME Games aren't exactly..._ ' the words weren't difficult to say, saying them to his girlfriend-turned-teammate was the difficult bit. ' _They're very... adventurous._ ' When they were new with one another, the CAME Games were a bit of fun - drunken fun, but fun nonetheless. Coco kissed every single member of her team at least once, though she kissed Velvet most. "Those are the rules of the CAME Games" he remembered her slurring. "One, because it's custom to do so. Two, because you and I are the same sex and therefore we must kiss. Three, you are a Faunus and I am not and I always wanted to kiss a Faunus. Four, just because you're really cute." After each of those reasons Coco leaned over and kissed the Rabbit Faunus. After each one, the red hue on Velvet's face grew. By the second one, she was enjoying herself. Fox was pretty sure that on the fourth one Velvet actually started the lean into the kiss before Coco. And that was long before any feelings were shared between the two, at least openly. Back when they were just two teammates. That was when Fox had kissed her as well, but he'd mentioned to Neo before, Coco was royally sloshed and he was rather drunk as well.

Doing all of that with Neo as his girlfriend-turned-teammate made him a little bit nervous.

' _Whatever you're worrying about, stop it. I'll be fine. Besides, it's not like I can blurt out the person I like drunkenly and they looked shocked. We're in a relationship they already know of. Shock horror!_ '

"What about Coco?" he spoke, realising that they were well out of hearing range, even for Velvet. Neo's eyes shifted to white in an instant. He was right, she did like Coco. A lot.

' _What... what about her?_ '

"You said so yourself. She said 'Fuck me' and your response was...?" He held his hand out, as if asking her to say what she had said previously.

' _I may or may not have possibly said "Okay then", maybe..._ '

"There we go. Still feel that way?"

' _Fox, she is stunning; of course I still feel that way. But I have you, and she has Velvet. I realised after I had thought that that I shouldn't have, but it was out there now. And now you know, so I don't feel too bad for saying it._ '

"So, if she said it again?"

' _Nope._ '

"What if she asked?" Neo hesitated slightly before letting out a definite,

' _Won't happen._ ' Fox was intent on pushing this as far as she would allow - this is probably what Coco feels like a lot of the time when she's teasing the rest of her team with something.

"What if Coco were to stand up, strip down to her bare skin, walked right up to you, sat on your lap, looked you deep in the eyes and asked - no, begged - you with that same question? What would your response be then Ni?" The words were there. She was desperate to blurt them out in her mind. But she held them back... not strongly enough though. A small crack in her defences let a single question loose.

' _Who else is there?_ ' Her eyes widened as she heard her inner voice speak. They widened even more when Fox ran with the idea.

"The whole team's there, all five of us."

' _Oh then totally! I'm sorry Fox but I would not let that opportunity slip through my fingertips because, I mean, dear Oum she is amazing and she looks stunning and she always dresses so fantastically and I still stand by my previous comment of how nice her bum is and I bet she's fantastic in bed too and... ugh, Velvet is so lucky!_ ' She composed herself slightly to look at her boyfriend as she finished her outburst. ' _No offense._ '

"None taken. So we're in agreement then?"

' _Yeah, I guess we kind of- what?_ '

"What? A boy can't fantasise?" He leaned in to whisper, despite there being a completely undetectable and much easier and safer way of communicating between one another. "They think they're quiet, or they think I'm asleep. Sometimes, it's one or the other, but on a few occasions it's been both. They sound like they were having 'fun'. and sounds like that make a single young adult man go crazy. I've always wondered, and it's always lingered there as an after-afterthought."

' _Sweet. I'd get first dibs on Coco._ '

"Hey, whoa, slow down there Ni. First, _I_ am completely inexperienced in that field as opposed to you, Coco and Velvet, who most likely have more combined hours having sex than I've spent awake in Professor Port's classes over the past year and a half. I wouldn't want to be jumping head first into the life of sex with _three_ well versed people who would most likely judge me like a sack of Nevermore dung against a perfectly pristine and reserved Deathstalker Tail."

' _Well, I mean... I'm more than happy to help you with your first time. If that's what you want._ ' He smiled at his girlfriend's inner voice, it was no longer playful and teasing, it had shifted to a much more caring tone. ' _I just want you to know that I am not pressuring you into anything. I may be a lot of things - murderer included - but even I have some morals I'd prefer to keep squeaky clean._ ' Fox couldn't help but let out a hearty laugh.

"'Look at me, I'm Neo. I won't pressure you into sex, but I'll stab a bitch if I get paid to do so!' Hahaha... ha... oh, that was too good an opportunity to pass up; sorry Ni."

' _You'd best be thankful I really love you, else you wouldn't have even finished your sentence._ '

"Regardless, I think that's probably the best idea. I want to be with you, I know that much is a certainty. But - and this is a big but..." Neo giggled, thinking back to Coco. "...child." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Point proven. Anyway; if Coco's thing goes through there is a possibility with it happening. I'm just... readying you on the off chance."

' _I said I'll be fine and I mean it._ ' She stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek; their height difference is going to make those sort of gestures very one sided when they were standing next to each other like this. Thank Oum she didn't like Yatsuhashi... ' _If it'll make you feel easier, I'll hold off a bit on the drinking so that nothing does happen._ '

"Yeah, no." The woman cocked her head to the side. "Ground rules of the CAME Games, if memory serves. It's a two day thing, and not because that's how long we play for but because you have to drink so much on the first day that the second is spent trying to rid yourself of the hangover. 'Every drink you are given must be finished by you'. And Coco, especially tipsy Coco, gives drinks out like they're candy on Hallowe'en. Drunk Coco kinda does as well, but to a lesser extent. Wasted Coco doesn't share. She'll 'give' you a drink, then knock it back herself. Also, she's very grabby at that stage."

' _Nice, I love it when someone grabs hold of me._ ' Neo threw the ball up, Fox felt obliged to hit it. He swirled round and enveloped Neo in a bear hug from behind, similar to the hug they had in Neo's shop, only a lot tighter now as they were out of the public eye.

"Yay! You love me now!"

' _I did not mean like this and you know it._ '

"But I _don't_ know what you mean, I am but an innocent, pure minded little man who has never had an impure thought in his life. Please, teach me what you know."

' _Oh, go suck a dick Fox!_ '

"I believe that's your job now Neo." She took a second to process what he'd said. Damn, that was good. Fox took a step forward, but rather than take one as well Neo instead rested her foot atop Fox's, her other leg doing the same. They waddled - because this sure as hell wasn't walking - for a minute or two before Neo spoke again.

' _Wait, you said "First" earlier, like there was going to be a second reason. What was it?_ '

"Hmm? Oh that. Well, I know who you and I, Coco and Velvet would be with _if_ it goes down. What about Yatsu? What'd he be in your little world of make-believe?"

' _Oh yeah. I... um... cameraman?_ ' Fox was laughing so hard at the comment that he lost focus of what was in front of him and tripped on an outgrowing tree root. He tried to turn his body so that he would hit the ground and not Neo, but because the ground was being particularly fast today it caught him mid turn as both he and Neo landed on their sides. ' _They really need to keep maintenance up when they fix..._ ' Fox had noticed it too; trees. He shuffled round, bringing Neo with him; Hai-no Hana was now over half its length away. They'd wandered into the forest in almost a trance. Fox's Scroll buzzed and Neo saw it was Coco. Their ears hurt the second he pressed 'Answer'.

"Oh so _now_ you pick up!" Coco bellowed through the Scroll "Where are you?! Evac is here."

"Well we..." he was going to lie, but Neo felt his lie building and smashed the idea down.

' _Just tell her the truth, what harm will it do?_ '

 _'Famous last words, those._ ' - "We lost our bearing and track of where we were supposed to go. It would have probably carried on for longer, so thanks for actually snapping us out of it."

"I swear Neo, if you're already dancing the No Pants Dance with Fox, I will revoke this honorary letter from the end of Team CFVYN so hard it'll-"

"Coco, it was fine; no pants... I mean yes pants, I mean... shit..." He felt the unease growing through the Scrolls and into Fox. "We walked and I tripped on a root. We realised we were talking so much we forgot where we were to stop." There was a huff through the Scroll as Coco answered.

"I believe you." The silence was brief as Coco was not done. "But for putting me on edge, you two need to supply drinks for the CAME Games." A dead tone played as Coco hung up. She knew she would be explaining it to them later anyway, so why waste her breath. They looked at each other and smiled.

' _I'll keep quiet until we're in the aircraft._ '

"I don't want you to, but okay."

She reached her hand up and kissed his lips once again, her head in an awkward position for the kiss but the thought and meaning was there much like the last time.

' _That going to tide you over?_ '

"Yeah, I think that'll do." And they headed back, still waddling as Neo never realised how amazingly simple and mundane this was, but also the most fun she'd had with one person in a while.

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Much slower than the previous chapter, but not every single one can be off the wall excitement and high octane action chapter after chapter. 'Mountains and valleys' are much more interesting for people to look out at than something like a perfectly flat as, I don't know, a football field. Just as a story ebbs and flows better with lulls in action then big set pieces.

We've got one more chapter of this arc to go, so I hope you enjoy it.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated

~Side Note~  
~As of this chapter's upload, **'Senseless'** is officially now my longest story in terms of chapter numbers _and_ words - STATS chapters excluded~


	25. Her New Family

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Velvet had regained consciousness whilst she was on the ride back towards Beacon. Her head was sore, like someone had plucked a Nevermore feather and drove the sharp end into each of her four ears with them meeting in the middle. Other than that, she felt great. Especially when she woke to see Coco, her beautiful girlfriend, staring at her like she was the only thing in the world.

"Hey hunny-bun."

"Mornin'." Coco let out a giggle of relief. "What?"

"We're not at Beacon you dunce. We're on our way back from Hai-no Hana."

"Oh, did we win then?"

"Yeah Velvs, we did. You were great."

"Coco, I may have not realised we weren't in bed, but I remember the fact that Nuckelavee screamed me into unconsciousness and that, judging from how we're all here in relatively one piece, _you_ all beat it without me. Big help. Whoop. Go me." The last three things she said were deadpanned with such sarcasm that Yatsuhashi, who was riding with the girls, felt really uncomfortable about it. Even though he knew how the girls were at times, that one seemed very much more personal than it ever has been before. She almost sounded disappointed in herself for failing like that. His worries were soon silenced when he saw Coco lightly fake a punch across Velvet's cheek, then grab her beret and place it on the Faunus' head.

"Velvet you helped us more than ever. We wouldn't have known about how devastating the effects of its screech would be unless you were there. Also, we got to see Neo's truly amazing leadership skills in action. It was odd, taking orders from someone who's mute, but she saw the whole picture and then some; we've got photos now of the Nuckelavee that we're going to give someone, most likely Professor Port, along with my Mission Report to Ozpin which will also detail its methods of attack. Velvet, we were the first known people to take on a Grimm like that and survive, and thanks to Neo's photos and four people's accounts of the story - five if you want to include what you remember of yours - we will have evidence to back that up. I'm pretty sure there are decently sized rewards for that sort of thing too, not that I'm in it for the money but it's a bonus." She brushed away the hair from her girlfriend's face, smiling. The smile dropped slightly at the sight of the small scab above Velvet's eye where Neo had made her collide with their sink. But her downbeat nature subsided the second she glanced down into the pools of brown that were her eyes.

"Y'know Coco," the Faunus said, staring at her own eyes in the reflection of the gunner's sunglasses, "I don't think I tell you how beautiful you are enough." The hue Coco's face went sent a giggle coursing through her core as she continued. "The fact that even though you try to be this 'big bad' leader, you're just as soft and squishy and caring in the centre as the rest of us." She reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of her hand. "The way you act when you're around me makes me feel welcome in your arms." Velvet reached and grabbed the sunglasses blocking her girlfriend's face and pulled them away. For anyone else, that would have been a death wish; Velvet wasn't anyone else. The dark reflective glass was moved and two pairs of brown eyes, one darker than the other, stared at one another. "Your eyes, undoubtedly the single most gorgeous feature on you that you hide behind glasses, are eyes that I can look into and see the lengths you would go to for your team. Not only that, but also the way they glow with a light that screams 'I am so lucky to have this girl by my side with me, and I want that for the rest of my life'."

"They... say that?" she asked, blinking rapidly.

"Well, if they speak the same language mine do, then yes." Yatsuhashi could tell they wanted to kiss, but that would mean they'd need to stop staring into their eyes to do so. And he could tell that option was not happening. They just remained there, Coco sitting on the seat whilst Velvet lay across her, fingers intertwined, both peaceful in the fact that they knew they had the other to look after them.

"What did I do to deserve someone like you?"

"I can't give you specifics I'm afraid. I can generalise though: you did everything right."

* * *

' _So what sort of things do the other three like?_ ' Neo asked, wondering through the aisle. She and Fox had taken a different airship than the other three did, heading into Vale instead of straight back to Beacon. If they were on CAME Games Drink Duties, they might as well get things they each like for them, at least to start with. After a while, they'd all probably be too drunk to realise what they were drinking until they see the bottles in the morning. Fox went through, listing off everyone's preferred drinking choices including his own as Neo grabbed them from the shelf with the exception of Fox's, as he knew which ones were the right ones for him, he could 'tell', apparently. After relative silence, save the sound of footfall, Neo groaned.

"What?"

' _I'm going to assume Yatsu likes this one because hardly anyone else can reach it?_ ' She stared up at the shelf containing the favoured drink of the towering student for CAME Games; Hanazake. His reasoning, according to Fox, was that "If I'm going to be drunk by the end of the night, I might as well have something to get me going." Considering the alcohol percentage in this thing, she could see why. The fact it was on the top shelf was just pure coincidence. ' _So, how are we actually going to get him some?_ '

"Well, I have shoulders, an-"

' _Well observed._ '

"Neo, I'm answering your question. I have shoulders and you are pretty light. Why don't you climb up and grab some?" She looked up at the tall shelf again, then at Fox. With a sigh and a smile, she nodded.

' _Well, I trust you not to break me, or anything else. And please don't drop me._ '

"Relax, I'll be fine." He kneeled down so that she could get on his shoulders. "Though my friend is always on hand to help if things go wrong."

' _You have friends?_ ' she joked. He looked at her, hurt from her words.

"I'm sure the rest of the team would be glad to hear that."

' _I was kidding._ ' She paused briefly. ' _But seriously though, what friend?_ '

"My friend, the floor." He leaned down even further and patted the floor like it was a pet. "He's nice and he means well, and he'll always be there to catch you when no one else can. Better watch out though, he's a little hard sometimes."

' _Well when you put it like that, I wouldn't mind getting to know Mr Floor. I barely know him and he's already hard._ ' Fox tried to be unimpressed by his girlfriend's constant flow of innuendoes as she climbed on his shoulders, but in his tired state, he just laughed. "That one wasn't half bad" he mentioned as he lifted off the floor.

' _Ah ha! I'm slowly but surely breaking you!_ '

"Me, and the bottle if you're not careful." She snapped her head towards the shelf and caught the two bottles that had fallen and were making their break for freedom.

' _Phew._ '

"Yeah, be careful next time."

' _No,_ _ **you**_ _be careful!_ ' she playfully threatened, covering his eyes.

"...Neo sweetie... Are we forgetting something?"

' _The booze?_ '

"No, my eyes." It took her a minute.

' _Oops..._ '

"Yeah, oops." She slumped on his shoulders, disheartened at her inability to have a little joke with him due to one tiny lapsed moment she forgot about one of the very things that drew her to him. "Hey." She looked at him, he was bending his neck back as far as it would go so that he could look at her. The petite woman read the invisible signs and leaned her head down and planted a quick kiss on his lips, despite how awkward it was to do so in this position. "Everyone forgets Neo. Even members of my own family have forgotten at one point. It's not a big problem. What is a problem is when I'm bullied for it." Neo shifted her weight backwards, indicating she wanted to be planted firmly on the floor now, despite having quite a lot of fun being the tallest thing in the store.

' _No one has the right to bully you babe. You've - we've - got an amazingly strong team to help you with that. A strong natured and good willed Faunus, a literal tank of a man and a team leader who casually carries around a Gatling gun on her belt. And to top it all off, I'm yours as well._ ' She stopped to grab his scarred hands. ' _I can be as faithful to you all to the same level as you all had been to me over the last months. I had no reason to come here other than you - something I couldn't even tell them - other than for friendship. I have more than that now; I have a team, a boyfriend, dare I say a real family again. I am so lucky to have you all._ '

"And we're lucky to have you Neo. Our team _is_ our family, and I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say:"

* * *

"Welcome to the family Neo!" All five of them raised their glasses to the middle of them and clinked them all together before knocking them all back in one swig.

" _Thanks guys!_ " she signed, wiping away the drops that spilt on her hand. " _I can't believe you see me as part of your team._ "

"Our team now Neo." Coco gave the woman a little hug as she continued "And as such, I declare that was the first shot of the CAME Games!" She took another shot at her decree, then opened the third of the drinks Neo and Fox got for her and swigged a hefty swig of that as well. She was already heavily tipsy, and they'd been at this for twenty minutes. The mute shot her boyfriend a glance.

' _Does she normally knock them back that quick?_ '

' _No, this is slow for her..._ '

' _SLOW?!_ '

"Right, so for our newcomer, the rules are simple: get acquainted with the team! Get to know them, and have fun doing it. Watch, I'll show you." She got up and plonked herself down in Velvet's lap, straddling her partner and wrapping her arms around the Faunus' neck. "Hey you."

"Hey."

"My name is Coco Adel." Velvet rolled her eyes and played along with her girlfriend, knowing that by the end of the night she wouldn't be. Might as well leave the self-embarrassment until much later.

"And my name is Velvet Scarlatina." Coco leaned in and placed a long kiss on the girl's lips, something she reciprocated after she realised it wasn't going to break off until she had exhausted herself. When that came, Coco looked back and smiled at Neo.

"And that is how you get acquainted with your teammate. I'll show you again." She repeated the process, earning an eye roll from Fox. The sight made Neo giggle. "So, your turn Neo. Get introducing." Neo wanted to go straight to Fox, but that was obvious. Instead, she sat by Yatsuhashi.

" _Hello._ "

" _Greetings._ "

" _My name is Neopolitan._ "

" _And I am Yatsuhashi Daichi._ " The pair gave each other a quick peck on the lips, assuming that was all they needed to do.

"Uh uh uh, Drink!" Yatsuhashi did, Neo looked confused. "Three seconds, at least, for all kisses. Else, drink!" She knocked one back herself. Neo turned back to Yatsuhashi and took a drink, then leaned in again for the kiss. This time, it lasted a little over five seconds before they realised they'd already completed the necessary time quota.

"Enjoy yourself a little there Yatsu?" Velvet teased, her partner still sitting on her lap whilst the tank looked at them.

"I was not going to pull away for fear I may have miscount-"

"AH! Fear; a forbidden emotion! Drink!"

"Well, it happened anyway." He took one, face scrunching up a little as he did. This stuff was stronger than he remembered. That, or running basically on empty for the past few days has made him more susceptible to the effects of alcohol.

' _I am so glad I can't speak right now, I'd be terrified if she could suss out wh-_ '

"FEAR!" Fox cried, pointing at Neo. Coco's head snapped to the ice cream girl and she uttered "Drink!" at her. Before she took one, she shot her blind boyfriend a look.

' _Traitorous cur..._ ' He winked at her and reached out for a drink of his own.

"No flirting at this stage Fox! Drink!" Clearly, he had remembered from previous times they'd played this how the game worked, so he knew his wink would earn him a drink. Neo moved on to sitting next to Velvet and Coco, as the team leader clearly didn't want to leave the Faunus' company.

" _Hey._ "

"Hey."

"Sup beautiful?" Velvet hit her partner. "Unnecessary violence against a teammate. Drink!"

"Oh, sonofabitch."

"You can take a double for the language."

"And you can take one for the early game flirting."

"That I will." They both took a shot as Neo continued.

" _My name is Neopolitan._ "

" _Mine is Coco Adel._ " As the third girl finished her second shot, she coughed as she signed her response.

" _And my name is Velvet Scarlatina._ " Neo leaned in to the Faunus and kissed her for the mandated three seconds, then one more for good measure.

"Leave some for me Velvs" the fashionista almost pushed her girlfriend out of the way to start the kiss with Neo, an action that was most definitely earning her a drink once she was done. When they were kissing Neo felt amazing, like she did when her and Fox first kissed each other; there was warmth and feeling and comfort all in the single bit of contact they were making. She wanted this to continue, she really did. But she withdrew after a little while, or was it a long while - she sort of lost track of time. "And now..."

"Ab bab." Velvet cut her sentence short with that remark and a hand in front of Coco's face, being careful not to touch it. "Drink first."

"What'd I do?"

"Unnecessary violence; you literally shoved me out of the way."

"...Fairy nuff." The beret wearer shrugged and took a hit of her open drink. As the two girls kissed (again), Neo made her way over to Fox.

' _Evening._ '

' _Hi._ '

' _The name's Fox Alistair._ '

' _Mine's Neopolitan._ ' They both let their lips curl up into a smirk as they leaned in for a kiss. Their bliss was cut by a booming "Drink!" coming from beside them, startling Neo out of the kiss.

" _Who's drinking Yatsu?_ "

"Me. I got bored of sitting around. So I called myself out on being bored, and now I am drinking because of it." As he took another bit of Hanazake from his bottle, Coco broke her kiss and leaned backwards to look at him, the Rabbit girl holding her middle to stop her tipping onto her own head.

"You can take two more for the double use of a forbidden word!" Rather than be mad, he let a small chuckle to himself as he raised the bottle and took a doubly large swig.

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

 **{END OF PART 3}**

* * *

Well, the chapter count just keeps on a'climbing, doesn't it? Seriously, we've just passed the milestone of 25 story chapters, and that's such an insane thought. Not only that, but the story is now over **65k words** long, which means there is now only one hurdle left to cross...

But do you know what's even crazier than both of those facts?

Y'all are getting a fourth arc of this story! Honestly, there were plot points on my original plan for this story that haven't even been vaguely explored yet, so we're really going in for this one.

I hope you like the next chapter like you like your pillows, 'cause this next one is nothing but fluff between our favourite (well, my favourite) pink and orange pair. For the astute, that does mean I will not be writing any more of the CAME Games, as I don't actually have any ideas to go off of and also it's sounds very similar to the Spin the Bottle thing I did in **_Vytal Decisions_** , so go read that if you want your fix [shameless plug is shameless]. Fill in the blanks yourselves as to what happened here. Or, wait until I've uploaded the next chapter, see where everyone wakes up and _then_ fill in the gaps.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	26. Alone in The Morning

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Pain. Everything was in pain. And by everything she meant her head, but everything else hurt because her head hurt so... ow, it hurt to smart ass herself. A groan would have passed through mute lips if it wasn't for the fact that it physically couldn't happen as she eased herself up to sitting position and groggily stared around the room.

Yatsuhashi was sleeping on his own bed, but he looked more like he'd fallen there and his body shut off completely the second he hit the mattress. Velvet was lying on the floor by the bathroom door, curled up and hugging her knees close to her chest. She couldn't see Fox or Coco anywhere though. As an urge rose up through her body, Neo decided that letting it pass simply wouldn't do, she needed to heed its call. She staggered her way towards the bathroom, ensuring not to slip on any bottles and cans left around or accidently kick Velvet, and upon opening the door realised why she hadn't seen Coco anywhere in the main room. She was sleeping in here, using the toilet bowl as her own porcelain pillow.

Neo's urge subsided as she didn't feel like waking Coco from her slumber just to relieve her own bladder, though that time may need to come a little later on. Shutting the door as quietly as she could still wasn't quite silent enough for the Faunus as even the slightest click of the door caused her to moan in discomfort and pull her rabbit ears to her head in an effort to save them from the pain. Neo's Scroll buzzed, and that noise caused even more discomfort for the Faunus. Neo tiptoed around the fallout to her Scroll as fast and as quietly as she could before it buzzed again. It was a message from Fox.

 **F - 'You up? x'**

Neo smiled, then stopped as it pained to smile. She typed up a reply.

 **N - 'I am now. No, you didn't wake me. Where r u? x'**

 **F - 'Common room. There's room for one more at my table x'**

 **N - 'Give me ten x'**

She shuffled herself away from the bed and went to go and grab a change of clothes from her drawer, only to realise that this wasn't The Cloak Inn. She _needed_ to get her stuff out of there before they threw it away. She had to go like this. But she looked terrible. Looking around for an option, she set her eyes on Velvet's drawers, she was the only one of the team closer to her height. She grabbed a pair of jogging bottoms and a t-shirt before throwing her own stuff to one side and heading out to the Common room.

The large area was completely empty at this time of day - 10:24am - but that was mostly because of the holidays. Well, completely empty save for one copper haired boy sitting at a table, back facing the entrance. Neo snuck up on him as best as she could and glomped him in a hug.

' _Morning pretty boy._ '

"Oh so you remember calling me that from last night then?" Truth was, she didn't. But it felt right, so she would continue to do so.

' _Nope. But it's true._ ' She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, feeling the heat of a blush against her lips. ' _So, why'd you ask me here stranger?_ '

"Well, I thought you could use some Hangover Cure Medicine." He held up two spoons and a large tub of Neapolitan Ice Cream. Her dual coloured eyes spoke what her mouth could not as she leaned towards it as if it beckoned her. Every time she got close to grabbing it, Fox just pulled it ever so slightly further out of her grasp. Normally, she'd attack if they tried to do that with her, but the ice cream dulled her natural reactions as she remained entranced by its tri coloured glory.

' _I want the ice cream..._ ' she droned, still leaning for it despite it being well out of her reach now.

"Sit down properly, and we can have some." She obeyed, moving at speeds even Ruby Rose would seem proud of. Fox calmly, but deliberately slowly, handed Neo a spoon. Then, he slowly peeled away the wrapping around the tub, making sure to take extra care not to miss anything. He popped the lid open and Neo could smell that goodness. Her hand shook as she couldn't contain her excitement; ice cream - especially Neapolitan - was her Achilles heel. Fox offered her the pot so that she could take a scoop, but she basically snatched it out of his hand and cradled it in her arms like a child as she started to take spoonful after spoonful of ice cream. Fox couldn't help but laugh as he took a second pot from under the table and opened that, taking much more care with eating his.

' _How'd you get some of this?_ ' she asked, her thoughts clear despite still chewing on the strawberry ice cream that she'd just shovelled into her mouth. Fox could have implemented that luxury, but he spoke normally instead as he didn't have so much ice cream in his mouth that talking became an impossibility.

"Well after our first date I took you back to The Cloak and, whilst there, I had a look round your 'room'. In your freezer, I saw that you had some basic things and a whole batch of Neapolitan. So I took a couple from there and brought them back here when I came back, dropped you off in bed then hid these in our freezer." He scooped a small chocolate spoon of ice cream, raising it like a toast as he finished. "And now, we're here." The dessert slid down his throat with ease.

' _Thank you._ '

"Don't mention it."

' _...really?_ '

"You can have your blind jokes for me, I can have my mute jokes for you."

' _Fine, but only because I like you._ '

To anyone walking in on them, the pair was sat in silence. But in reality, they were having a long conversation regarding what happened last night, all the things they remembered, the things they didn't, the usual. They opted to keep the conversation in their heads so that someone didn't walk in and accidentally overhear part of the conversation; all whilst eating spoons of ice cream that calmed their own hangover headaches. The boy found that the chocolate third was best for him, but he had to make sure to space out the chocolate between the strawberry and vanilla so that it wouldn't run out before he was done. Neo, while perfectly happy to shovel as much ice cream as she could manage, always favoured the strawberry before. But now, what with her new life and all, she too was drawn more and more to the chocolate; the brown ice cream reminding her of the team. She still had a hard time believing it; she had a team!

Empty pots rested on the table top as the couple leaned back and relaxed, their hangover headaches basically nullified by the cold and arguably less painful sting of an ice cream headache.

' _That hit the spot..._ ' Neo sighed.

"Agreed. I didn't know ice cream worked so well as a hangover cure."

' _It doesn't. I surgically spike all my pots of ice cream with a secret and illegal substance of my own ingenious design that eases the mind and nulls all pain before violently jerking you to an immobilising stiffness and killing you in an instant. You're under the tranquil spell of the drug; I must say that it was lovely being your girlfriend, but you ate my food, so your death is entirely your fault._ ' Fox's milky eyes stared at her as she poker faced him in return.

"Then why won't you die as well?"

' _I won't die because prolonged exposure to my own wonder drug has made me immune to its effects._ ' The heart inside Fox started beating ever faster in worry.

"I cannot tell if you are being serious or not and that is _very_ concerning to me."

' _Of course I am being serious. You are going to die for having eaten my food. There was no other alternative._ ' Fox turned to her and pleaded with her, taking her bait. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead.

"Please Ni, there has to be a way to stop it. I'm your boyfriend, you can't just kill me like that!"

' _Tell that to the last guy who ate my food. He was my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure no one ever found the body._ ' The terrified 'Eep!' that escaped Fox's mouth made the next part all the sweeter - she never had another boyfriend; she had told him this before, but in the heat of the moment he'd forgotten. ' _In fact, I still vividly recall exactly what happened that day._ ' She got up from her chair and stood right by Fox's, pulling him up to his feet. ' _I remember walking with him like this to a chair,_ ' as she said this, her hand dragged Fox to the sofa in the middle of the common room. ' _He sat down, completely oblivious to what was to come. I sat in front of him like this,_ ' after she'd made Fox sit on the chair, Neo straddled his legs with her arms wrapped around his waist. Under normal circumstances, Fox would have most likely held Neo back. Now, he was too terrified of his own death to do anything, ' _and I whispered something in his ear... like this._ ' She leaned in to speak a little quieter in his ear and he still fell for it. He was hooked on the story so much that the payoff would be so perfect. ' _And then, it happened. He was dead, just like that._ ' She snapped her fingers near his head causing him to jump a little at the sound. ' _I remember the sound of his scream too..._ ' her hands moved to position nearer to her boyfriend's side ' _it sounded... like this!_ ' And on that she started her assault.

Her fingers flew into his sides as she started tickling him underneath his ribs. His laugh echoed through the halls like a scream. In a fruitless effort to escape he tried backing away, but realised all too late that he was sitting on the sofa and therefore had no means of escape at all. Instead all that did was make him fall backwards exposing more area for Neo to attack, an opportunity she did not pass up. She focused under his arms, the sensation causing a natural reaction in the boy that pulled his arms to his sides trapping her hands underneath.

"I... you... pay for... this!" he managed through laughs.

' _Oh really, and how's th-_ ' her sentence was cut short as she felt a pair of hands reaching to her own ribcage. She hunched over at the sensation, freeing Fox from his torment and allowing him to extract revenge. She squirmed as she tried to free herself from the tickles, but it was no use. She fell backwards off the chair and onto the floor, her boyfriend following her down, his offense still pushing forward. The smile plastered over her face couldn't hope to be rivalled as she curled up into a ball hugging her sides in a last ditch effort to save herself.

"What do you have to say now?"

' _I sub... I'm sorry please... just... stop..._ ' her thoughts a mess as her mind was otherwise occupied.

"You promise you won't do that again?" he retracted slightly, letting her have a moment of peace to call an end to the war.

' _Well..._ '

"That wasn't definitive." He reached in and started tickling her sides once again.

' _IPROMISEIWON'TDOTHATEVERAGAINJUSTPLEASESTOPTICKLINGME!_ ' The speed at which her thoughts came threw Fox off, but he accepted her terms of surrender and relented. He let out a giggle as he lay down beside her on the floor, his arms wrapping around her in a hug. The action released her tightly wound coil as she opened up and returned the hug. ' _I'm sorry._ ' She looked a little bit ashamed at her actions. ' _I remembered you were a little ticklish from our not-first date and I wanted to use that... I'm sorry._ ' His reply first came with a gentle kiss to her forehead; there was no malice or disappointment, there was no grudge held.

"Don't apologise. I think it's nice though that you remembered, but we are Never. Doing it. Again."

' _Fine._ '

"So Neo, what was the plan for today?"

' _Well, you said that CAME Games tended to be two day things, but the second day was mostly there for recovering from the first, right?_ '

"Yeah, that's usually how it's worked before."

' _That means that those three probably aren't leaving the dorm today._ '

"Yeah... where are you going with this?"

' _Back to The Cloak. If they're not leaving, then I can shoot off back to The Cloak and get Coco's dress sorted out._ '

"That's actually not a bad shout. I'll come with you."

' _Um... how good are you with materials and sewing and all that? Considering the fact that you're blind and all, I was wondering._ '

"Oh no, I won't be there to help you. But if you think you're going back there to sit in that room all alone you've got another thing coming. I'm going with you." A sudden brainwave brought a smile to scarred lips. "And I'll bring the book with me. I can read on the 'bed' so you'll be able to hear me whilst you go along and do your thing." Now the corner of Neo's lips cracked up with a smile.

' _I love the way you think Fox._ '

' _Is that all?_ ' It was becoming almost natural now for Fox to swap to his head voice whenever he was speaking to Neo about things like this. It meant he could be as truthful as he wanted and the only way people would know what was being said was based off reactions from either of them. ' _Because I can't think of good things all the time, you got lucky that one was decent. Some of my thoughts are also a little bit dirtier than that as well, you love those too?_ '

' _As much as I love you, yeah._ ' She closed the gap between them and planted a kiss on his lips. They held there for a couple of seconds before breaking off and looking at one another. The glow of Neo's Aura in Fox's eyes was nearly blinding, but he had grown used to it. In fact, he was glad it was so bright - years of figurative darkness meant he wanted to latch onto any source of light he could find, and he nabbed the jackpot with her.

"You managed to find some spare clothes?"

' _Not here, no. These are Velvet's._ '

"I figured. I take it you've got spare clothes back at The Cloak Inn?"

' _Those, I do have._ '

"Well then, give me about fifteen minutes to get ready and we can head there now."

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Welcome to Part 4 of ' **Senseless** ' guys and gals!

For all of those who are new to the story at this point or aren't following either myself or the story ' **Senseless** ', this story will be updated every week on a Thursday morning [~8:30 GMT] unless I miss an upload due to problems that day, in which case it will be at a similar time but on a Friday, or I state otherwisr to say no upload.

This story is really growing into a labour of love now, it's almost unreal how long it's been going. And that's specially considering I haven't the faintest clue as to where the inspiration for this came from. An off the cuff story that's easily going to breach 75k words... some people dream of that sort of thing.

What's even better for y'all is that I've got a bit of action planned for next chapter as well - diving straight in with the fighting this time - so expect that next week. Well, "fighting".

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	27. A Story Cloaked inn Darkness

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

They were a few streets down from the Inn when Fox's Scroll pinged a unique ping in his pocket. Coco. He took the Scroll out and let the text-to-voice functionality installed on his Scroll do its work.

 **C - 'Where are you and Neo at? We have just woken up.'** Fox spoke his reply to the Scroll.

 **F - 'We've headed out for the day. Hangover gone. See you this evening.'** He put it away, thinking that would be the end of the conversation. It wasn't; no more than a minute later his Scroll pinged again.

 **C - 'How can you be up this early and your hangovers already gone?! Lucky bastards'** Fox blankly looked at his screen, hoping by some miracle his sight would return to help him see the words she'd sent him.

' _Does she even know what time it is?_ ' he thought to himself. ' _Do I?_ ' Before he got a chance to open his mouth and ask, a reply came through in the form of Neo.

' _It's 18 minutes past noon._ ' How did she... oh, right...

"Thanks hun." That was the first time since their not-first date that he'd forgotten they shared a link and could hear each other's thoughts.

' _Don't mention it_.' Her response was punctuated with a playful little nudge. The boy smirked at his petite friend.

"We'll see." He nudged her back, then caught her hand and she returned.

They walked into The Cloak Inn still hand-in-hand, but the moment Neo saw and heard the Innkeeper talking about "clearing room seventeen" - the room she'd been staying in - she let go.

' _Fox, they're going to gut my room! Can you-_ '

"Sure." They were so in sync with one another at the moment that she didn't need to finish; he felt her panic and stress, something that was mirrored in her inner voice. He marched up to the front desk and called to the man in charge.

"What's going on here?"

"I'm clearing out Room 17. Occupant's not been there in three days. Policy's policy - stuff's going straight to the dump."

"Well 'The Occupant' is right here. We were just going in there."

"Oh were you? Well tough luck, it's no longer hers. As such, anything that's in there that doesn't belong to The Inn is getting thrown away." Fox heard the shuffling behind this voice stop, the guys who were going to be doing all the heavy lifting were now backing their boss up.

"We are going to be going in there. We will pay for the room for one day, 24 hours. In that time, we will have finished what we were going to do, removed everything that is my girlfriend's from the room and leave here in peace." He heard a couple of muffled giggles from the men behind the desk. "We don't want trouble" he stated.

"Don't you? What a coincidence, because I wasn't looking for trouble. Until a certain _girl_ came into my establishment." He eyeballed the person he was speaking about and her eyes started shifting from Heterochromatic to an off-white hue. But not through fear. Through sheer unadulterated rage. "I've had question after questionable question from shady people regarding this person, and I've kept their mitts off my customers. But that doesn't stop me getting my own hands dirty. I looked you up," his attention shifted completely to the woman standing furthest away from the desk, "you're officially dead! Which is perfect, 'cause I haven't got anything against killing something that's already been dead once." One of the men made his way round the desk and started heading towards Neo. Fox stepped between the two, halting his movement.

' _I **can** handle him y'know._ '

' _And yet I'd rather you didn't. I know you're capable, but I think provoking you is giving them what they want. Attack them **if** they get close enough to do so. I'll give-_ ' His little talk with Neo was interrupted by an aggressive shove from the person blocked by Fox.

"I said, move it boy!" Blind eyes stared right at the man. He burst his Aura outwards and activated his semblance to get a better feel for his opponents. Whilst they were all physically strong, some - like the Innkeeper - stronger than they'd lead you to believe, they were all just men. None of them had significantly large Aura's with the exception of the guy standing in front of him; even that wasn't anything to write home about. They were regular men, which meant they were weak. Which means that Fox didn't have to try.

"How much for 24 hours?"

"You aren't staying here."

"What is the price for 24 hours?"

"Get him!" Fox ducked under a very easily avoidable left hook from the Aura guy and practically skipped away from the kick that followed.

"Really? Nothing for 24 hour rates?" The left-right swings were broadcast so loud even Fox could see them coming. He made slight adjustments to his posture in order to dodge them as, in comparison to fights he'd had previously, these punches were sluggishly slow. "Okay then, how about until the end of the day? That's less than 12 hours, but you can charge me for 12 hours I don't mind."

"Would you _stop_ talking and fight for real?" The invitation he'd been waiting for. Fox let the next punch skim his face slightly, but as it did he reached his arm out to grab it and stop the person attached from moving.

"Okay." With a quick thrust of his arm he struck a palm into the man's lower chest, knocking the air out of him whilst also sending him flying across the room. The few patrons sitting around got up and fled with haste as the man came to a crashing halt by the table they were just sitting at. The sound the man made was very odd, almost like the air was being let out of one of those duck toys.

"You've done it now. Take them out." Fox's face screamed disappointment and confusion, did they not see how this had just played out? But, if they were insistent...

"So do you not charge for 12 hours either? That's a bit disappointing." The student was talking all throughout the time that the men from The Inn were trying to hit him and the sight honestly entertained Neo - normal people would realise that they have no chance against a Huntsman unless they get really lucky. These people had no such luck, so the fight was over before it even started, it was just how each person was going to bow out at the end was the only difference. "Tell you what," the boy continued, kicking one of the men in the side and sending him careening into a nearby wall, "what if we just stay until, what do you think Ni - 9 o'clock? You be done by then?" She nodded for the benefit of the idiots, but answered in her head for the one who really needed the answer. With a smirk he continued, but not before using the momentum of an attacker to swing the guy round and throw him into two of the remaining three other people there, dazing them all. "Yeah, 9:00pm. We have the room for the next 8 and a bit hours to finish what we needed to finish, then we shall leave here by 9:00pm and we won't return again."

"You can take the last part of that offer and do it now!" the Innkeeper shouted as he went for the boy. The man was taller - not by much though - and clearly saw himself as imposing. But in all honesty, the first guy that was taken out was clearly the best shot they had at taking him down and that had failed miserably and this would be no exception. He dashed at Fox, who just back flipped onto a nearby table with his arms crossed.

"Final offer, I'm not wavering: 9 hours is all we're asking for."

"You're getting nothing!" The copper haired boy sighed, then shot a glance up at his girlfriend.

"Just as I thought; brain's been knocked out of whack. Let me help with that." In a move faster than the normal eye could see, Fox hit the Innkeeper with such force that he shot right back behind his desk and into the seat that was there. The bigger man now sat there with an expression that was on the way to surprise and horror, but with him being basically knocked out it stopped partway through the change. A soft constant squeak came from the man as Fox walked over, indicative of him not being completely gone. "Now, can we go up to our room now?"

"Uh huh..." he wheezed.

"And you won't disturb us?"

"Nuh uh..." was the reply.

"Perfect! We shall be out of your hair by 9:00pm tonight. I'll leave you be now." Neo skipped over to Fox and linked her arm with his as they made their way up to Room 17, leaving the groaning bodies of the student's attackers lying about on the floor.

* * *

' _That was fun! Can we do that again some time?_ '

"What? Me taking on a bunch of men whilst you sit on the sidelines and watch?"

' _If you didn't like what I did to you then I'll join in next time; but yes, that._ ' Neo unlocked the door to Room 17 and walked in, Fox joining her soon after and shutting the door behind him.

"It depends how I'm feeling if the situation presents itself again."

' _Besides,_ ' she mentioned with a teasing smirk, ' _I loved watching you throw someone to the ground._ ' As she finished the sentence she sat down on the floor, grabbing her sewing equipment from the side of the room and pulling it closer.

"Watch yourself Ni, else you might be on the receiving end of that throw."

' _Oh I hope I am._ ' The blind boy shook his head in mock disappointment, failing to keep his smile under wraps as he did so. The smile faded and shifted to a look of discomfort as he sat upon the poorest excuse of a mattress he'd ever felt.

"...You're not even subtle."

' _Fox, have you-_ ' "Seen me?" was going to be how she finished that sentence but before the words even managed to cross her mind she remembered that Fox genuinely hadn't seen her. Ever. At least, not properly. Her alternative felt much better and wasn't playing on the sight thing again. ' _-even been paying attention to your girlfriend recently? I am not a subtle person._ ' Rolling his milky eyes, the boy rummaged through the bag he brought with him to find the book - it didn't take long.

"Now I know you dosed off when we read this last time, so I'm going to start that chapter again. Sound good?" Once she had the needle holding the colour of thread she was going to use, Neo looked at Fox and smiled.

' _Yeah, let's do this._ '

' _Right._ ' Fox flicked through the pages until he found the ones with the latest bit of familiar numbering in the corner. From there he traced upwards on the page until he felt the texture of the title against his fingertips. Once he knew he was in the right place, he began. ' _*Chapter 20: Xenophilius Lovegood_

 _Harry had not expected Hermione's anger to abate over night and was therefore unsurprised that she communicated mainly by dirty looks and pointed silences the next morning. Ron responded by maintaining an unnaturally sombre demeanour in her presence as an outward sign of continuing remorse. In fact, when all three of them were together Harry felt like the only non-mourner at a poorly attended funeral. During those few moments he spent alone with Harry, however (collecting water and searching the undergrowth for mushrooms), Ron became shamelessly cheery.*_ '

Both people happily went about their way that afternoon. Neo's hands moved as they needed to - stitching material together, sewing in pockets, hemming and the like - whilst Fox spoke the words he felt on the page. He could read braille fairly quickly if he wanted to, no slower than it took someone with perfectly normal sight to read average words, but a lot of the time he chose not to and instead let the words have their own time to make an impact. He was like that before Neo showed up with his previous book; he could have finished it in a week or two due to classes and all that, but instead he dragged it out for over two months because of his desire to let what was being said stick more. Of course, when she threatened to spoil the story as a means of bribery he couldn't idly make his way along the story anymore, appreciating the words scribed, and he instead shot through the remaining pages as he would any other braille book he owned.

When twists and turns came in the book, Neo reacted appropriately. It wasn't just background noise, she was still listening to every word that Fox's inner voice spoke to her. Many people across Remnant had Audio Stories. Their reasons for such varied from "I prefer it to reading the words", to "I'm visually impaired, this is just easier" to the "When I'm working, I can still have the story read to me" excuse. Upon consideration, the ice cream girl determined that this was almost like her own private Audiobook. Unless a drastic change happened in her boyfriend's life, Fox wasn't going to be reading to anyone else - especially with the intimacy that she and he had now; no one else would get the words spoken straight into their heads like she did.

It was a privilege she cherished.

5:40pm rolled around faster than either of them realised. Neo was practically done with the dress, just a few more bits and pieces to be finished. Fox was wrapping up the book at the same time, a few sentences to go.

' _*The last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air. The train rounded a corner. Harry's hand was still raised in farewell._

 _"He'll be alright," murmured Ginny._

 _As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly and touched the lightning scar on his forehead._

 _"I know he will."_

 _The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.*_ ' The book shut with a heavy thud. "The end."

' _Wow, that's how you end a series._ ' She wiped away a tear that had escaped from her natural pink eye at the realisation that the series was over.

"I _know!_ I just hope that the stories all get immortalised forever somehow, I think they're too good to let them disappear into the aether." Neo noted that Fox really had a way with word when he wanted to. With one final pull of the thread, the dress was complete.

' _There, Coco's dress is done._ ' A quick glance at the clock made her smile as it showed her the time, ' _and with plenty of time to spare as well._ ' She made her way to her boyfriend and sat on his lap, arms draping round his shoulders as she leaned in and tenderly kissed him, the boy returning the gesture. ' _So how are we going to spend the last bit of time we have in here?_ ' There was no denying what she was hinting at, but Fox was unsure of how he personally felt about the situation.

"Ni, I..." The way he spoke to her was not lost on the woman - she had hidden her feelings as best she could before meeting Team CFVY and Fox, and she'd also grown quite good (if she did say so herself) at reading Fox's emotions. She heard and felt the uncertainty in his voice. Her initial response was a simple hug.

' _Don't fret Fox. I know that I move fast when it comes to that sort of thing, so feel free to take your time deciding when you're ready. I'm not going to push, remember?_ ' Fox starting laughing. ' _What is it this time?_ ' He started recounting the thing he mocked her with earlier that week.

"I'll stab a bitch if I get paid to-" Neo grabbed the boy by the collar of his vest with both hands, her grip tight.

' _Utter one more word and I won't hesitate to punch you. I don't care if you're my boyfriend._ '

"You don't?" Fox pretended to be hurt at the statement. "Well then, I'll make you care!"

' _And how exact-_ '

There was no time wasted as Fox pressed his lips against Neo's much more forceful than the last time. The nature behind and the suddenness of the kiss actually shocked her, but that shock subsided after a second or two. The kiss lasted much longer than any other one they'd consciously started, as they had to draw themselves apart to breathe. But they didn't lean away far, they stayed as close to one another as they could. Neo felt a tongue pressing against her lips as they kissed, and she accepted the invitation and parted her lips to allow her tongue to meet his. They'd made their way onto the bed now, the metal frame creaking as its shoddy support was called into question. As this happened, Neo found herself fiddling with the zip of Fox's vest. Realising, she stopped.

"Shy?" he mocked as he drew breath. He made the first move and removed his vest completely as they continued making out, leaving his scarred chest completely exposed. She was already a little flustered, but seeing her boyfriend shirtless brought the blood flooding to her cheeks in a very strong and noticeable blush. Honestly, she was a little confused as to why - she'd seen plenty of people naked, why was this any different? Well it wasn't a completely new feeling, she'd felt it once before with...

The Arctic Fox Faunus.

Neo felt a level of intimacy that she only felt with the Faunus from the café before, a feeling of wanting something special in the moment rather than something fleeting. She didn't want this to be like it was with anyone else. Fox deserved more than that.

Feeling like it was only fair, Neo undid the button and slipped her own jacket off, leaving her in just the borrowed t-shirt.

"So we're here again..." Fox teased, breaking the making out as staring into her dual coloured eyes.

' _We are._ ' She looked a little worried. ' _Do you... want to go further?_ '

"Not by much right now, but we can do that in the future - there's plenty of time for it."

' _I'm all yours pretty boy_ ' she smirked.

"Are you trying to get me worked up even more?" he asked resting his forehead on her own. "Because it's working." He grabbed the bottom of the t-shirt and lifted it off. She was sat there now in a plain dark bra, smiling at his previous comment.

' _Is it now?_ ' She peppered his cheeks with kisses as he continued. The closer he got to undoing the item of clothing, the lower she kissed until she was kissing his collarbone. As the bra was completely removed, Neo hugged Fox tighter. She backed off after a few seconds, now sitting there with her chest completely exposed. As much as she loved how freeing this was and how much fun they could have now, Neo had never felt so oddly disappointed at being in this state of undress.

"Neo? What's wrong?" Fox could tell her mood had suddenly shifted. She looked at him hesitantly, but seeing the genuine concern for her on his face pulled the corners of her lips up slightly into a grin for a few fleeting moments before they rested back in their normal position.

' _It's just... You can't see me..._ '

"Neo you know full well that hasn't stopped me before."

' _I know but..._ ' she looked away, embarrassed. ' _You can't see me and I feel like something's missing because of that. It's... I'm not sure..._ ' Fox's answer was another hug.

"I understand how you feel. There have been so many times in my life where I've hoped for even a brief moment that I could see what everyone else saw and experience things like that." He broke the hug to look at Neo again, his milky white eyes causing her to flinch slightly. "I know it will never happen. But I have accepted that, as much as I know I will miss so many beautiful things." He never explicitly stated it, but the way he ran his hand along Neo's cheek and brushed away a stray hair or two gave her all the indication she needed to understand that was his way of saying that he thought she was beautiful. "And besides... I don't need to see 'em if I can feel 'em." He hugged her tight once again feeling her breasts against his own chest.

' _Well, as much as I'd like to invite you to have a play, the mood has kind of gone for me._ ' She wanted to tell him how she knows that it was her fault that the mood had gone, but that didn't feel right for her to outright mention it. She opted instead for implied blame as she uttered a quiet mental ' _I'm sorry._ '

"Neo, it's fine." After a quick forehead kiss, the boy mentioned how not only was this as far as he actually wanted to go today due to his uncertainty about the entire thing, he also didn't feel like here and now was the best place for them to do that anyway. Hearing that reasoning Neo agreed.

' _If you'll excuse me Fox, I might as well start packing up. I needed to change out of everything anyway._ ' In a small moment, there was the tiniest flicker of passion still in Neo. Capitalising on it, she mentioned to her boyfriend ' _You're welcome to help if you want..._ ' There was no hurry to answer on his part, so the mute took the silence as a no. She rose from the bed and wandered over to her drawers on the other side of the room. She slipped Velvet's jogging bottoms off throwing them onto the t-shirt from the Faunus, then searched through her stuff for some casual clothes for her to wear back to Beacon.

"Y'know just because I can't 'see' you," he said walking up behind her "doesn't mean I can't see you through your Aura and that I can't appreciate you in your fullest. Example, you have a great bum." He punctuated the statement, which Neo was pretty sure was a compliment, was his hand grabbing hold of a cheek with a quick and gentle pinch, causing the woman to jump slightly, her eyes flashing white ever so briefly. Yup, definitely a compliment.

' _Fox!_ ' she replied, startled at the unexpected contact but not exactly complaining. ' _A little warning next time?_ '

"Of course... I'm still right though."

' _Not denying that, I do have a great bum._ ' She turned to Fox and leaned into his chest, still exposed from earlier. Without warning, she reached round and grabbed his bum, getting a much firmer and longer grip on it than him earlier. He jumped. ' _You have a great bum too._ ' Fox smiled and reached round again, holding hers as she was holding his.

"Well, I try my best. Squats."

' _Nah, you can try and play it down all you like, this is an amazing natural ass and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Just like mine. A lot of girls would be jealous of a behind like yours._ '

"And guy would be jealous that someone like me could have someone with a behind like yours." Neo grinned.

' _You're so nice to me, you know that?_ ' There wasn't any sarcasm in how she thought that, it was genuine.

"Why would I be anything less?" He released his hold on her bum to hug her waist, and she did the same. They swayed from side to side gently, losing themselves in each other's arms. After a while, Neo's thoughts broke their silence.

' _...I still need to get changed though._ '

"Sorry. I'll grab the rest of your things."

After 20 minutes of getting changed and collecting what needed to be collected, the two people left the room and The Cloak Inn promptly, returning the keys and also leaving some extra Lien on the desk as they left - Fox felt that it was the least they could do for him beating them all up and severely knocking their egos down a large number of rungs. They had everything of Neo's in tow; all her clothes, plus Coco's new dress, were packed in a single suitcase, other odds and sods were in a small bag she carried around her shoulder. Velvet's spare clothes were in Fox's bag, as was the book and the remainder of the all-important ice cream. The rest of the food stayed there, it wasn't out of date at all so the next people could have a little something when they got there. To save them the trouble of hauling everything back, Fox called his locker to them and they loaded it with everything they could - all that remained was Fox's rucksack, but Neo was more than happy to have that on his person rather than in the locker.

' _D'you think it'll take us long to get back?_ '

"Well, it took us an hour to get here so I'd say about 70 minutes to get back, considering it is mostly uphill."

' _Ugh_ ', she groaned, her shoulders making the movements whilst the sounds never came. ' _Look, no offence Fox, but I'm completely walked out for today._ '

"You lazy, lazy person. Unfortunately for you, there's no airships heading up to Beacon at the moment, so walking is your only option." An idea came to his head as he looked at the metal container standing beside him. "Well... the only _safe_ option that is."

* * *

Coco, Yatsuhashi and Velvet all wondered about exhausted. They'd stirred from their slumber a little over 6 hours ago but they still all felt really tired, so they opted to stay in their dorm, clean up the mess and talk about last night trying to piece everything together. It was working rather well, but there were holes missing that Fox and/or Neo may have been able to fill in had they stayed there. After 4 hours of lying around and talking, Coco felt really off and wanted to walk. So that's what they did, they just kept walking and walking, chatting away as they did. And here they were at 6:29pm, still chatting and walking. They were exhausted from it, but that was the point - walk until you were too tired to do anything else, then make your way back to the dorm and collapse for a good long night's sleep.

"I wonder where the lovebirds are?" Coco thought aloud. Velvet heard Neo leave, but she was too busy nurturing the headache she had that she didn't remain focussed on the door clicking shut for too long, it was too loud for her ears at the time. And she didn't hear Fox come back in and stay for very long - she thinks he just grabbed a change of clothes and some other things then left again. Yatsuhashi was in a deep sleep throughout all of that and Coco's porcelain pillow grew less and less comfortable as she came round. So in actuality, the last person to see them was... whoever of the three passed out last. The only contact they'd had with them was Coco's message to Fox.

"They are probably enjoying the day," Yatsuhashi commented, "perhaps it is wise to leave them be."

"I'm with Yatsu here Coco; although I see your point, they've been gone all day, they will be back." Coco was still a little cranky from yesterday's CAME Games, so she inadvertently snapped back at her girlfriend.

"I can't say for certain. That's why I need to know." Velvet jumped and let out a small cry of fright, the sound bringing the gunner of CFVYN back to reality. "Sorry Velv."

"That's alright. You can always track his Scroll" the Faunus replied, answering her partner's previous comment.

"Good shout hun." The smaller girl blushed as her girlfriend reached for Scroll in her pocket and opened up Team Tracker. "Haven't needed to use this in a while." After an eternity to update, the new UI of the app threw the leader off a bit. "Um..."

"Try this." Yatsuhashi, despite being very traditional in terms of weaponry and style, still knew how to work his way around technology. He handed back the Scroll once he'd inputted a few details.

"There he is; he's still by The Cloak Inn... wait, no he's coming this way now... really fast... abnormally fast." The two others looked at the Scroll and saw that Coco was right, Fox was basically flying towards them at speeds faster than an airship. Their fixation on the screen broke when a message from Fox came through.

 **F - 'Neo asks if any of you've ever seen of "Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"?'**

"What?" Coco spoke in unison with Yatsuhashi, the pair clearly not understanding their newest teammate's reference.

"Tell him that I have."

"...Okay." **C - 'Velvet has.** **Why?** The response raised more questions that the original question.

 **F - 'Look up and listen'**

"What is he on about?" Before anyone else had a chance to answer, Velvet picked up on faint hollering from afar. She glanced around at her eye level, then followed the instructions from her teammate. A gasp escaped her lips as she heard the cry from earlier a lot clearer.

"Waaahooo!" Coco and Yatsuhashi heard it as well and looked where Velvet was looking. The towering student's mouth dropped open and the only thing that could rationalise the fashionista's thoughts were two simple words:

"Holy _shit!_ "

Up in the sky were Fox and Neo riding a locker across the grounds of Beacon as if it were a tamed beast, the boy screaming in pure joy all the while. They flew past their teammates as the locker arched downwards fairly heavily, throwing the pair of them off. They had expected that to happen, so as they were flung off Neo grabbed Fox and opened her parasol, letting them float a little slower to the ground. For what looked like an ordinary bladed parasol, it could hold a lot of weight. Metal narrowly missed concrete - not that it really mattered - and instead crashed into a patch of grass near the main building and two students eased their way down next to it. The three members of CFVYN jogged up to the locker as their friends touched down.

"That was so much fun!" Fox panted, his messy hair now messier because of the wind sweeping it behind him. "You have _got_ to try that at some point guys."

The team leader raised both of her hands in front of her as she refused the offer. "No thanks, I choose life."

Rabbit ears folded down slightly as she answered. "Yeah, me neither."

"I'd like to try..." Everyone turned to Yatsuhashi, who people thought would be the one person to outright refuse. "...but I don't think it would be a save idea so I shall refuse." That was more like it. "Besides, I think, I'm taller than the locker."

' _Fox, they're no fun!_ ' Neo moaned almost petulantly, stamping her foot, crossing her arms and pouting slightly, a sight that caused Fox to chuckle.

"What'd she say?"

"She said that you're no fun."

"Well excuse us Neo, but you were having a lot of fun last night with us. Were we fun then?" Coco's tone was accusatory, making the woman feel much smaller than she already was. The pout dropped and for once she looked a little shy, almost like a child as she nodded at the remark. "I'm just kidding you little psycho." The fashionista broke her ruse and walked up to Neo, embracing her in a friendly hug. "We are fun, as last night proved. Sometimes though, we like to take things slow. That cool with you?" A small smirk made its way onto Neo's face as she looked into the sunglasses of her friend and team leader. In a move no one but her was expecting, she jumped up and started kissing Coco. The sounds made by the three people observing varied by all had the general sound of shock in there, especially Velvet.

Neo parted lips and smiled at Coco, who struggled to find words to say. Eventually they did come, and they weren't too pleasant. "...Um... mind explaining before either myself or my very ticked off looking girlfriend tears you apart?" Neo thought fast and signed her excuse.

" _The Parchment of Volentes. I think it's realising that Fox and I are taking too long or something, so it needed to find a new outlet and you were there and..._ " Coco looked at her as if Neo thought she could play her for a fool. " _Because I **wanted** to kiss you.,_ she admitted. " _You're attractive. You all are. I wanted to kiss you, that's why. That's all._ "

"Well, in future, don't. You've got someone, and I've got someone. As does Fox and Velvet. And all Yatsuhashi would need to do to avoid anything like that from you was to stand up. We like you Neo and welcome you to the team, but don't do that again." Coco turned and headed back to the dorm, Yatsuhashi following her and Velvet bringing up the rear but not before shooting Neo a very harsh look.

"Neo." She stared at her boyfriend. ' _Want to explain the real reason?_ '

' _To get it out of my system. I still find her really attractive and I wanted to get that out of the way. I don't want to think about her anymore, the way I think about you._ ' Shame flooded every sound that rang through Fox's head. He had a thought to cheer her up.

"Do you trust me?"

' _What? Of course I do, that's a stupid question!_ '

"Then give me a minute, okay? I'll sort it out." He went to catch up with the rest of his team leaving Neo by the locker. "Coco!" Upon hearing her name, the girl spun round.

"What is it Fox?" She sounded bored, as if she had already heard the excuse Fox was about to say.

"She said that she is sorry. I know she could have said that herself, but she'd rather let you _hear_ someone say it rather than see it. She acknowledges our relationships, but sometimes she..." - ' _Do you want me to say?_ ' he asked, knowing full well she was listening in.

' _Okay._ '

"Sometimes she acts on pure instinctive muscle memory. She finds us all attractive, and when she was out doing her thing before coming here, if there was someone like that around she'd go: kiss, sex, gone. That's been part of her routine, her life for the past..."

' _Seven years._ '

' _Really?! Wow..._ ' - "...seven years of her life. Kicking a habit like that is going to be hard. She's promised she'll refrain, but she did want to say before she stopped that you have a fantastic bum Coco." Eyes widened behind reflective glass as the words registered in Coco's head. Before he knew it, Neo had teleported behind him and was clasping her hands tight over Fox's mouth to stop him talking, cursing his very existence and calling him a traitor and the like. They struggled a little before they were interrupted by Coco erupting in a fit of laughter.

"Fox," Velvet whispered with an enormous amount of dread, "you broke Coco." They all looked at the gunner in various high-level stages of panic at the sheer amount of laughing she was doing.

"Coco... do you... not believe Neo?"

"I believe you Neo, I really do." She managed through slowly receding giggles "I'm sorry for what your life had been before us. I'm sorry I was harsh with you, but my point still stands. Even so, I can't believe you did that - you kissed me! Not only that; but you kissed me out in the open, without a seconds hesitation, in front of not only my team but my long-term _girlfriend!_ You're crazy!" Neo blushed at the backhanded compliment. "You have guts, but you're still crazy; anyone else wouldn't have ever _dreamed_ of doing that! I'm glad we have you on Team CFVYN, you got to be a little crazy to join the ranks."

"Hey, why am I crazy?" Velvet protested.

"You run into battle with a box and a camera that can project hard light copies of other people's weapons you have taken photographs of when you concentrate hard enough - even the sentence explaining it sounds crazy." Her usual attitude had returned, as did her sense of humour. "You're crazy tall, you're crazy blind, I'm crazy good looking and now we have someone who is genuinely crazy!" She started laughing to herself at her own joke, but was picked up off the ground by Yatsuhashi and thrown over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Yatsu, put me down, now!"

"Nope. I'm crazy tall, so the fall might kill you."

"Ha ha, put me down." As she looked over her shoulder at her friend carrying her, Neo started signing to Coco. The fashionista lowered her sunglasses to get a better look, but to no avail. "Fox, what's she saying?"

"I dunno. I'm crazy blind, so I can't see what she's doing."

"Well, why don't you ask her?"

"I tried, but she's just talking crazy at me."

"Okay, not funny anymore. You too Yatsu, put me down!"

"Not until we get to the dorm." He headed off.

"Hey Yatsu!" Fox called, earning his teammate's attention. Neo made sure that he was facing completely her so that Coco couldn't see.

" _Take a while, Fox and I need to get back first. It's for Coco._ " His answer was a nod, and his walk became very slow. ' _Shall we get my stuff to the dorm?_ '

"Yes, let's do that."

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Your eyes did not deceive you, this chapter really _is_ over 6.5k words long! It's now officially my longest single chapter I have written for this, or any, story of mine on here.

The reason for it being so long? There didn't feel like a good breaking point, so I didn't have one. Simple as.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	28. Mates' Reveal

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
 _'Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Finally being set down after about 25 minutes on Yatsuhashi's shoulder, Coco stretched her back and moaned slightly as it cracked and popped.

"Was there really any need for that Yatsu? I can walk perfectly fine by myself." She decided to demonstrate her ability to walk, only for her leg to fall asleep under her and make her tumble to the ground in a manner most ungraceful. She glanced up at her two teammates embarrassed. "Oh come on, you know that was because you were carrying me."

"Of course it was babe," Velvet replied, extending her hand out to help her girlfriend up and to steady her short walk down the corridor back to the dorm. Reluctantly she took it and they started making their way back to the dorm. As they rounded the corner, Fox was stood outside waiting for them.

"Oh, hey Fox. What're you doing on guard duty?"

"Precisely that; I'm on guard duty. And I've been given strict instructions by Neo that only Coco may enter at the moment."

"I do not understand Fox, this is our dorm as well."

"I know Yatsu, but I think she's got something special planned; I'm not too sure." Fox was lying, and Yatsuhashi knew that. Why else would they have wanted to get back before them? "All I was told is that Coco could enter, but no one else." The team leader looked at her friends, then shrugged.

"Well, if I'm getting some sort of special treatment then I don't want to pass the opportunity up." She wormed her way out of her partner's embrace and walked to the door, still a little wobbly from sleepy legs. Before she entered she leaned to Fox and whispered in his ear. "But she _does_ realise that putting a sock on the door is a lot more subtle than having someone on guard duty."

"Coco!" he hushed back, knowing full well that Velvet heard all of that. "What about the whole 'Don't do that again' thing?" All she did was turn towards her partner and shot her a reassuring smile that the Faunus returned.

"I'll be fine. Velvet trusts me not to do anything stupid."

"Do I now?" Coco winked at her partner, walked past the boy on guard and went into the dorm, shutting the door behind her.

"Now, mind telling _us_ what's going on?"

"Sure. We'll walk and talk." Yatsuhashi, whilst not opposed to the idea of more walking under normal circumstances, had just about worn himself out from doing nothing all morning and only actually getting up around 3 or so hours ago.

"Must we walk Fox? We are tired."

"I'm sure you both are, but it won't be a long walk I promise. We just need to find someone."

"And is that 'Someone' a person we know?"

"All will be revealed. Now come on, I don't want the surprise ruined for anyone." He walked down the hall, prompting the other two to follow but not before glancing at each other with a look of "What is he doing?" on their faces. The blind boy started to explain almost everything - he couldn't exactly say what she was in there, or else Velvet's surprise would be ruined too. But as they rounded the corner to head down the next corridor, rabbit ears pricked up at the sound of what she thought was her girlfriend squealing in delight.

20 minutes later, Fox returned to the dorm with Velvet and Yatsuhashi, but also with Yang and Blake as well. Ruby and Weiss were elsewhere, and Fox was right in thinking that Blake would have been in their team dorm at this time - it was there, or the library. He didn't expect Yang to be there, but she and Coco were good friends anyway so he didn't mind her coming along. And anyway, she and Blake were nigh inseparable as is, Yang would have found a way to be there even if she wasn't properly invited.

What interested the blind boy most about their relationship was their connection to one another. They were in the early stages of a relationship when he "died", and afterwards they progressed through the stages like a normal couple, but recently - like, the past three weeks or so - they felt so much closer than ever before. It was like a switch; one day they were as they had been, the next they were always there with the other - even when they weren't. Fox always felt a warm Aura hidden away with Blake, or a veil of shadows easing the infamous temper of Yang from her centre - it was like their Aura had become a part of the other's. Whilst people could see how close they were physically, not many people could see this though; only he and maybe one other person in the school at a push - he wasn't too sure on what everyone else's semblances were. He saw the orbs of deep violet and yellow prancing about in the seas of the other person's Aura and, whilst he found it quite amazing to see he felt like asking about it would be a little too abrupt for him. 'Hey guys, how come I can see your Aura in the other person?' Oh yes, that'd go down _so_ well...

"So Fox," Yang asked in her usual confident manner "why've you brought my Blakey back to yours to see Coco? Because let me tell you, Coco and I are friends but I would rip her to pieces if she ever tried anything with her!" An elbow struck her in the gut as she looked at her girlfriend. "What?" Eyes widened in horror as her head slowly turned to look at the other Faunus in the entourage. "Shit..." she muttered under her breath, realising that not only did Blake hear that but the Rabbit Faunus behind her probably did as well. "Velvet, I did not mean it like that in any way. I would never hu-"

"Yang," Blake reminded her, "you are digging yourself into a hole. Stop now, and I'll gladly remove the shovel for you." With a quick breath, she stopped her train of thought.

"I'm still sorry though."

"It's fine, I'm sure Coco would do the same if you tried anything like that with me." Yang smirked at the remark.

"You say that _now,_ but give me half an hour and you'll rethink that statement."

"Yang..." She didn't hear her feline girlfriend's comment, as she continued over it.

"I mean, I am _great_ in bed!"

"So is Coco! Better than you, probably."

"Was that a challenge Velvet?"

"Why, scared you'll lose?"

"Oh, you've done it now. You're on!" As the two girls shook hands and sealed the deal, the boys in the group stood there in shock.

"...did they just...?" one asked.

"I think they did..." replied the other.

"Can we get to the dorm before Goodwitch catches us talking about that topic?" added Blake, who everyone almost seemed to forget she was even there (that particular talent came naturally to her, sometimes against her will). Yang didn't forget, she deliberately chose to ignore. Blake hated her when she did that, but she couldn't hate her forever. Yang was the one person in her life who brightened her darkest days, and for that she was eternally thankful.

"Good call Blake." Velvet turned and walked hastily towards her dorm door, Fox having to almost jump at her and knock her away to stop the surprise.

"You are just the worst sometimes Yang," Blake whispered harshly.

"Oh come on Blakey! You know you love it~" she sang, a Cheshire Cat grin plastered over her face.

"Not like that I don't. Not in front of others I am not as comfortable with. Our team: fine, when Ruby's in a good mood. JNPR, fine. Velvet, tolerable. Fox and Yatsuhashi, no."

"My bad. But hey, a Sex Battle against Coco and Velvet; how cool is that!"

"I know!" The Faunus' face beamed as she spoke, the frustration at her partner in the last sentence disappearing in an instant as the challenge presented itself again. "We _so_ have to win that, I know how competitive you get."

"Let's not dwell on my victory before it happens. They wanted us here, let's not be rude."

"It's nice to see some of my politeness is seeping its way into your behaviour," she smiled, her ears twitching beneath her bow.

"I don't mind. Two of you would be my idea of Heaven." The pair shared a quick kiss before walking to the dorm of their second year friends.

* * *

The five of them sat in the dorm waiting patiently. In the time they had to kill, they chatted amiably about various different things of no real interest. Yang boasted about something she accomplished in Professor Goodwitch's class, only for Yatsuhashi to remind her that he did the same thing with less effort, needing only to outlast the limited number of items thrown at him. Blake discussed with Fox and Velvet - mostly the latter - about books; her safe for work ones, obviously. The lewder stories were for her eyes only. Well, her's and Yang's now.

But Fox had one question for the younger students, and he really wanted to ask it, even though he mentioned to himself earlier that it would sound crazy. As time stretched on, Yang grew restless and wanted to get up and break down the door to hurry Coco up. Fox decided that it was suicide to try and stop Yang from doing what she wanted - he'd learnt that the hard way when he initially refused to teach her some new fighting moves.

' _Oh well,_ ' he thought, ' _as our glorious leader put it: "you got to be a little crazy to join the ranks._ "' - "Blake."

"Yeah Fox? What's up?"

"I want to ask you about you, and Yang of course." First hurdle cleared. Second hurdle too, as Yang seemed to relax and her thoughts of walking to the door were scattered into her mind. "I, and I imagine a fair few others, have noticed how... close you two have been recently."

"You... sound like you're saying that like it's a bad thing Fox."

"No Blake, I didn't-"

"What, do you _want_ me to punch you in the face? Because I can punch pretty hard." A gentle hand rested on her nearest arm.

"Yang, stop threatening them; they're upperclassmen as well." The rage bubble deflated and a smile overtook her face, easing Fox off the defensive.

"If it came out as sounding malicious or offensive I am sorry, I didn't intend it to. I was just... your Aura's piqued my interest." The first year couple blinked, then shot each other a glance. They knew where this was going, but they each felt that the other was ready to speak about it.

"Really?" Yang asked, playing ignorant for a bit to see whether this really was going to go where they thought. "What about them?"

"Well I can see them with my semblance and, for those I spend a lot of time with, I can see them more often in my normal 'vision'. I see your Aura's, but inside each of you is, I dunno how to explain it... like a little bit of the other's Aura as well." It had gone exactly the way they'd both thought it would. The Faunus took her girlfriend's hand as she started to explain.

"So as you are all probably aware, Faunus have slightly different customs when it comes to relationships and the like as opposed to humans. Multiple people can be partners and to us that's not anything abnormal. But one thing we do have that is very different, but kind of not, is called Mate Marking." Velvet's ears pricked up upon hearing that and her eyes widened in glee; she'd figured that this had happened but she never saw Blake on her own enough to ask properly. "In its simplest terms, it's like a love bite where the other person puts a little bit of their Aura inside of you, connecting you together in a way no physical contact could ever rival."

"I mean..." Yang started with a smirk. The disapproving look she got from her partner told her to back down which she did, but not without a little knowing wink that, to her surprise, was returned. Oum, she loved how her traits were slowly spilling into Blake.

"There are three stages to the Mate Mark. The first is temporary and lasts for about 10 days at longest, a week on average, but it can be reapplied whenever to whomever. We've been and gone with the first stage, it kinda..."

"It happened one night during our little 'fun time'; Blake got a little too into it and apparently I gave the 'All-Clear' to her through some very weird, alien language I didn't even know I knew."

"Yang quit playing it up, you're worse than Nora sometimes. You rested your head on mine at one point and that was all." She turned to the three older students to explain. "As Velvet is probably aware of, the way initiating the first stage is done is during or immediately after moments of love between two people - romantic, sexual or otherwise - one person can rest their forehead on the other. If they push against it in response, that is them giving consent to give them a Mate's Mark. Yang... didn't know this, so the next morning was... interesting to say the least."

"So Blake and I talked about it. She mentioned everything she did to you, but in a bit more detail. We gave it a few days to decide on our decisions - 'cause this is a bigger deal to Faunus' than I ever could have imagined - and we came to the conclusion that there is no one else in the world we would rather be with. Problem; a human can't _make_ a Mate's Mark on a Faunus." Velvet's glee dropped as she heard that, her thoughts being shoved to the back of her mind.

"Fortunately for us though, I was a young, stupid and naïve young Faunus. I thought I'd found the one a long time ago, but when we made one another's Mate Marks I felt his emotions and saw that he was ruthless and cruel and was enjoying making people suffer. I was gone soon after that, our Aura's was being purged from the other's body 5 days after I'd left but the bite mark remained. It also meant that Yang could put her Aura in me just as I could with her, becoming equals. So, on the night of my birthday that's what we did." With a nod they slipped their clothes off of their left shoulders to reveal what was, to the untrained eye, a pair of matching tattoos. It was their emblems; Yang's on the right, Blake's on the left, both leaning inwards and the tops of each connecting to one another forming a link between the two. The colours were of the that person's Aura, but nearer the link at the top they blended together so that it was near impossible to know where one started and the other began. "We officially became each other's Mates."

"They are beautiful, you two are very lucky to have found one another," Yatsuhashi said once he was done admiring the artwork on their shoulders.

"Aww, thanks big guy," Yang replied, a slight blush creeping its way onto her cheeks.

"I can't believe it!" Velvet squealed "That's so awesome!" She tackled her true study-buddy to the floor in a hug that frightened a little "Eep!" from the girl.

"Again with the tackle hugging behind my back Velvet? I'm going to need a few words with you about that." All eyes turned to the door to the bathroom. Out was walking Coco, glammed up in her new attire. All jaws, with the exception of Fox's as he had already seen the dress, hit the floor at how she looked.

Coco was wearing a long gown that was sitting about 1" above the ground, even in bare feet. The material was a mocha brown that faded seamlessly into caramel near the bottom with fine swirls of woven in scarlet designs along the side. The gown itself hugged her body perfectly, not too tight as to restrict movement or breathing or show too much of her off but just perfect enough to compliment her shape. The neck was cut at around the collarbone, showing only the smallest bit of cleavage. Round her shoulders was a shawl that was in the same colour of material as the weaves on the dress, only this one was made of something different. It was a pure velvet shawl in scarlet red.

"Coco..." Velvet managed, standing up and walking over to her in a trance.

"Hey Velv, what'd you think? Pretty incredible, right?" The Faunus felt the dress and still stood there in amazement.

"Coco, you look beautiful."

"Oh stop it you, you'll embarrass me." She didn't care, she just liked teasing her girlfriend - something she and Yang both had in common.

"But I mean it. I do not tell you nearly enough, but you are beautiful." She pulled her girlfriend in to kiss her, their lips meeting and all the ways Velvet would have struggled to express her feelings using words came through effortlessly in that action.

"Fox, your girlfriend is a little miracle worker. I love this."

"Wait, hold up," Yang called, holding her hands up to stop everyone else whilst the words continued to process, "your _girlfriend_ made that Fox?"

"Yeah. It took her a couple of days, but she did that."

"That took _days?!_ I would have thought weeks, a month even."

"Nope, just two or three days."

"Holy shit..." Yang and Blake looked back at Coco and the amazing dress she was wearing. "So where is the talented young lady?"

"She was in here with me," Coco replied, "she said she'd be out in a second." True to her word, she was. Yang's eyes shifted to red in an instant, her hair glowing its brilliant golden light as she shot up and marched to the girl.

"You have got some nerve coming here! You _that_ eager for me to beat you to a pulp?" Fox jumped between the attacker and his girlfriend.

"What are you playing at?"

"She tried to kill me 6 months ago, and I made a promise to myself that if I ever saw her I would kill her first." Neo's signature smirk grew on her face at the determination of the girl - it's why she found her so attractive, but the smirk infuriated the blonde more.

"Yang, that's enough!" Blake grabbed her partner's arm, doing her best to keep it from rising to punch Neo. It was a lot harder than it seemed - Yang was much stronger than most people under normal circumstances. When she was riled up like this...

"Neo isn't like that anymore," Fox assured. "She was doing a job for people she now hates just so she had money in her pocket and a roof over her head at night. But she has changed. She's the unofficial fifth member of Team CFVY." He tried to lighten the mood with the comment, and to his surprise it worked, albeit using that word in the vaguest of senses. Yang's expression didn't change, but the heat and glow definitely eased off slightly. She stared at the petite woman, the reason for her suddenly training like crazy after the incident on the train to better herself to beat her.

"And how can I know to trust her?" Fox went to reply, but Neo stepped in front of him and walked to the middle of the room. She beckoned Yang closer, something the first year did with great hesitance. In the most basic terms she could muster, she made three small gestures. She pointed at Yang, she smacked one fist into her open palm, and then she tapped her cheek twice, Universal Sign for "You. Punch. Me."

"Neo, no!" Fox tried to intervene but a glare from the shorter one of the two halted him in his tracks.

' _Trust me Fox. It'll all work out. She can hit me to let go of her rage, then maybe we can be on good terms._ '

"You want me to hit you?" The mute nodded, beads of sweat forming as the heat built up again. Yang smirked; this was what she had wanted. She cracked her knuckles and slowly wound up a punch. "This is gonna hurt, you do realise that?" The small woman took a long, hard breath as she nodded again, bracing herself for the impact. Yang looked at her and hesitated. Blake's Mark started glowing with a slight golden glow as she read Yang's feelings - the glow drawing Velvet's eyes more so than Yang's actions.

 _Closure. Anxious. Fear._

Fear? Why would Yang be scared? She saw the amethyst eyes darting across the smaller girl, watching and waiting for the moment when she'd respond and counter her attack, throwing her to the floor and stabbing her like she didn't get the chance to do back on the train.

That moment never came.

Instead, Yang saw her sister. She saw someone acting exactly how Ruby was acting when she got really angry with her and let her temper burst. She remembered a few years before joining Beacon that this very scenario happened and Ruby stood there with tears flowing down her face as she braced for the inevitable attack that would follow.

Back then, that moment never came. And now, it reminded the brawler so much of the past that she doubted she'd be able to do it.

Yang was scared that she was about to do something she had sworn herself against doing to someone who in this moment reminded her of her sister, and she decided she _couldn't_ go through with her threat.

In a move that surprised everyone present, Yang rushed to Neo and caught her in an embrace, tears now falling from her eyes.

"I can't do it Neo. You don't deserve that treatment. I'm sorry I didn't trust you, but you've changed." Neo realised that the girl was not out to do anything aggressive towards her anymore, so she returned the hug. "I can't stay mad at you forever." Blake felt her girlfriend's emotions.

 _Forgiveness._

"You are one multi-talented woman, ain't ya?" The brawler broke the hug to look at Neo. "That dress is amazing." The ice cream girl blushed slightly at the compliment.

"So Blake, what's your opinion on the dress?" Fox asked.

"Same as Yang's - I can't believe you did that by yourself Neo." Neo's blush grew in intensity. "You look fantastic in it too Coco; can't give _all_ the praise to the tailor here - no offense." Neo didn't care, she'd had more than enough compliments.

"Thanks Blake. She got everything I've ever wanted on this thing, even pockets. Do you know how hard it is to find a good dress with pockets? How'd you even know what I wanted?" The woman smiled and walked over to her boyfriend, wrapping her arms around him. "Oh right, of course. Thank you too Fox. You really helped make this dress so damn great."

"My pleasure Coco."

"Well, Yang and I better head back. We've got a little bit of studying to do. We'll see you and Coco in a couple of days' time then Velvet?"

"Yes, we shall. I think it'll actually work quite well." She dropped her voice to a volume that was inaudible to even highly trained human ears, but not too difficult to hear for a Faunus. "I want you to help me Mark Coco." Blake's eyes widened slightly, but she kept them under control to not draw attention, and simply nodded. "Thank you," the Rabbit responded again in the whisper.

"What have you roped me into Velvet?"

"When it comes, you'll enjoy it." The two first years both started giggling at the mage's phrasing, drawing their attention again. As if two parts of a perfectly functioning machine, both Blake and Yang simultaneously put one hand on their hip, made a ridiculously over the top pouty face, raised an eyebrow (something Yang was much better at than Blake) and uttered a single word:

"Murr!"

Their giggles couldn't be suppressed any longer as they grew into full on body laughs. It seemed that Yang's immaturity had found its way to Blake, just as her traits had made their way to Yang. Team CFVYN looked at each other. They signed to each other.

" _Anyone got any ideas?_ " Four head shook. As laughs passed, the first years bid their farewells and left for their own dorm. Once out of Faunus hearing range, Blake turned to her partner.

"We've got a job to do for our little Sex Battle."

"What, do Rabbit Faunus have different buttons I need to press or something?"

"No. Well, maybe. But that's not it." Blake dropped her voice on the off chance someone might wonder round the corner. "Velvet wants to give Coco a Mate's Mark too, and I believe she wants me to help."

"Um.. how? Couldn't it, y'know, backfire and kill me or something?"

"No, I'd just need to bite Velvet that's all, Coco could do the rest afterwards. Besides, multiple Mates, remember?"

"Oh yeah..."

"And also, that may help win them over in our little challenge."

"Not that we needed any help to begin with." Yang grinned and took her partner in a bridal carry. "But I have to admit, I think I am actually a little bit rusty with my whole lovemaking magic."

"Yang, no you are not."

"Well I think I am, and I don't want to lose to Coco and Velvet," she teased. Blake wasn't buying it.

"You could have just asked y'know. I would have said yes." She winked at Yang, making the grinning blonde grin even wider. Blake decided to go back to Yang's previous attempt at getting to the subject and played along with it. "You're not rusty Yang. Well, I don't _think_ you're rusty, but I suppose there's no harm in making sure."

"Now you're speaking my language, Kitten!"

* * *

' _They loved it!_ ' Neo reminisced as she lay in bed with Fox, hugging him tighter at the thought.

' _They sure did Ni. You did good._ ' She gave him a look.

' _Good? That all? Lowballing much..._ '

' _No, you're right. You did an amazing job. They sounded so pleased with you work. I'm so proud of you._ ' He leaned across and kissed her forehead, and as he did he felt her sigh of contentment.

' _Thanks Fox._ ' He glanced down, her Aura seemed a little off when she said that.

' _Something's bothering you, I can tell; what is it?_ '

' _It's just...ugh, I wanted you to see them. See how happy they all were._ '

' _Neo, its fine. I've accepted I'll never see them, even if you wanted me to._ '

' _It still doesn't mean it didn't pain me to see you not seeing them._ ' They settled down a little more, with Fox drifting off to sleep before Neo. In the brief moments before she shut her eyes for the night she reached out and placed her hand above his heart. He didn't know she did this, but it helped to soothe her and get to sleep easier. She felt his heart, and felt her own sync up with his. Before sleep took her away completely, one final thought crossed her mind.

' _I wish you could see them._ '

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

 **-_- Edit: 6-07-18 -_-**

So as a Reviewer ( **Firecat21870** ) very kindly told me, I had not creditted someone for an idea. So, many moons later...

Credit for the idea of Mate's Markings and all the lore behind them goes to **|OmegaInfinity|**. If you want an entire story dedicate to the Mate's Marks, go check out their ongoing masterpiece **'Linked in Life and Love'**. It's a Pollination [no Enabler] story, which may throw some of you off, but put that idea out of mind and enjoy the story for what it is: a masterpiece. It goes into far more detail than my story ever will on the matter.

Despite being very inexperienced with this sort of thing, I am fully aware that creating something like the dress would take far longer than a couple of days. But my explanation is simple(ish).

Using Dust in weird and wonderful ways, scientists managed to manufacture small Time Dust Crystal shards, creating similar properties to a Schnee Time Glyph, but on a smaller scale, that they used exclusively in machinery at first, particularly crafting machinery like sewing machines. That meant that every time said machines were powered, they'd emit a time bubble that seemingly made the operator work at much faster paces to everyone bar themselves. Eventually, it got to a point where the gems could be worn on rings, or attached to needles, for similar results, using anything up to five shards.

Neo, despite being a very good and talented craftswoman, still needs them to do what she does at that speed. She uses special needles and occasionally machinery with seven shards, mostly because she herself modified them to accommodate more of these deep blue shards. It meant time moved far slower than it normally would in that bubble with anything rated five shards and thus she could create faster.

For those of you wanting to know how Neo does her thing so fast; ta-dah!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	29. Again

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Neo's body told her to wake up now. She always listened to her body. It seemed to tell her the right things - most of the time. But she wasn't awake enough to question herself.

She did, however, question why. There had to be a reason.

Heterochromatic eyes scanned the room; were there assassins? No, anyone trying to get into the room like that would have alerted Velvet. So that's a no for assassins. One of _Her_... things? Again, they'd need reason to come in here, they were still Grimm. And good luck getting Grimm in here without at least someone noticing beforehand. No to it being Grimm. Her Period? No, she never got them, and so never had to worry about that problem. Was it... dear Oum, was it _Goodwitch?!_ No one messed with Goodwitch. A panicked search of the room deemed that The Scariest Thing to Walk on Remnant was nowhere in sight.

The woman relaxed back to rest, the morning sun shining through the window - but not that she cared. She had Fox, and with that she felt at... at... where's his heartbeat?

' _Fox?_ ' The long, painful silence that followed helped drive her worries home. ' _Fox?!_ ' She leaned across, resting her head on his chest to confirm what she thought she felt before. There was no heartbeat at all.

In a desperate attempt to revive him, she rolled him over onto his back and started compressing his chest, foregoing any training she learnt over the years of being alone, in an effort to restart his heart. ' _Fox, wake up. Wake up!_ ' she mentally cried, her compressions getting much sloppier as the minutes dragged on and she became ever the more distraught. ' _Please... don't do this... not now..._ ' Every compression grew weaker and weaker as she grew more and more defeated. Tears ran unabated down her pale cheeks, her eyes trying their best to convey what cries and wails would do a much better job at than they.

The ice cream girl hunched over his body and began to noiselessly weep. ' _Why?_ ' she asked herself over and over, not understanding the cruel and twisted games the Gods played on her. She looked up, wanting to know if they had cursed her to forever be alone. But in a brief moment of realisation, Neo remembered that she _wasn't_ alone anymore. She was currently in a room with three other people in it, all of whom she trusted and they in turn trusted her back.

Coco's dream was pleasant. It was her and Velvet, walking together without a care. The sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky, and everyone else in this dreamscape, even Yatsuhashi and Fox, were blurred out. Only Velvet could be seen with clarity. That dream was brought to an abrupt end when she was shaken awake by Neo, her eyes red from crying and the tears still currently cascading down her face. The leader spoke with a hushed voice so as to not wake their other sleeping teammates, but still with a curious and worried tone at seeing her like this.

"Neo? What's happened?" Signing proper sentences seemed pointlessly long-winded, so she settled on quick words to get the point across. And they would.

" _Fox. Dead._ "

"What?" Coco jumped up and went straight to Fox's bedside, feeling for a pulse or breath. She couldn't find one either. "Velv! Yatsu! Up, now!" The two sleepers were up in seconds; whenever Coco took the tone she currently had they knew she meant business. "Fox isn't breathing, get some help." Velvet's hand shot to her mouth with a gasp. Yatsuhashi fell eerily quiet, looking at Neo who was still by Fox, silently sobbing once again. "Get help!" The two remained as they did, tears beginning to form in the corners of the Faunus' eyes.

"Not again..." she murmured through a trembling lip.

"NOW!"

"Coco, he's dead!" The deep bass sent shivers down the leader's spine. Yatsuhashi had rarely been angry when at Beacon, and even then it could hardly be classed as anger, merely raising his voice, but this was the first time that he had ever turned his 'anger' on a teammate. "He is dead!" The repetition seemed merely to be conforming to himself of the fact rather than to confirm to anyone else who wasn't listening.

"Yatsu, I can't lose him! Not again, I've already lost him once." With that, she fell to her knees as her crying began. Neo was crying into Fox's chest, holding his hand all the while, Velvet was crying whilst comforting Coco who was sobbing into her girlfriend's shoulder. "I am such a shit fucking team leader."

"Enough Coco, there is nothing you could have done-" the giant was interrupted by the sobbing gunner, who refused to listen to reason, standing up and thrusting her finger into his chest with every word.

"Explain, Yatsuhashi, how Fox would have considered me anything but a poor leader when in the past three months he has died not once, but _twice!_ You cannot justify yourself with this one Yatsu. Don't even try." He wanted to push further, wanted to reassure her. That would only serve to frustrate her more, so he stopped.

"How could this happen again?" Velvet said through teary eyes and a shaky voice. Despite the boys and girls being partnered together on Initiation, Fox and Velvet were the closest to one another in the team; this was before she and Coco became an item, of course. Losing him was like losing family - it was for all of them.

Neo wasn't sure if they'd stopped talking, or when even. She just saw Fox, laying there on the bed. He was dead. The sight of him tied her stomach in knots. This must have been what it was like for her team back when she and Fox died the first time. They must have felt like this - a feeling that nothing ever was going to be the same. But whereas they lost a teammate and a partner, she had just lost her boyfriend, her lover, the one. He had to be the one, no one else would have had the connection that they did. Maybe she should just run again, go back to finding attractive people and sleeping around. Perhaps she could try something with the Arctic Fox Faunus from the café, there seemed like there was something between them, however small. But thinking like that now was insensitive. Thinking right now seemed insensitive. She wanted time to mourn the loss she'd experienced. A loss she'd never felt before.

 _Ba bum_

The sound was missed by everyone the first time round. The mute girl placed a kiss on the boy's forehead, then went to sit with the rest of her grieving team.

 _Ba bum_

Neo heard it this second time around, as did Coco.

 _Ba bum, ba bum_

Yatsuhashi was next to notice.

 _Ba bum, ba bum, ba bum_

Funnily enough, Velvet was last to hear it. The original members of CFVY stood around the bed whilst Neo sat down on the side with Fox. His heart rate climbed to steady levels, mostly pleasing everyone. He was alive, but this was the second time he's 'died', but not really. But then his heart rate passed normal levels, reaching the territories of tachycardia. His breathing, which had returned with his pulse, was short and shallow, his body tossed and turned in his sleep - he was dreaming. But it was a nightmare.

The copper haired boy threw himself up screaming, the sound frightening the shy Faunus girl with acute hearing and their team leader as well, even though they both knew it was coming. He squinted slightly at the mass of light, then recoiled in horror at a sight on his hands that he was holding up to shield his eyes. He rubbed and stared at them so long that he started welling up.

' _Fox?_ ' Neo said, taking his hand. He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the hand that was holding his. He touched it, then followed it up, his jaw dropping further and further as he looked further up the arm. His eyes settled on Neo's and he took a long and heavy intake of breath.

"Neo..." he stroked her cheek and for the first time she had noticed his eyes. No longer were his pupils greyed out and his irises weren't milky anymore, the pupils were bog standard black and his iris colour was a dark copper brown. It seemed that he had noticed too. "Your eyes... they're different colours..." The two other girls looked at one another in confused glee. "They're beautiful Neo." The sunlight shone through the window and its rays illuminated Neo in a rich morning glow. She looked angelic. "You're beautiful."

She'd heard enough. She leaned in and planted the firmest kiss on the lips she could manage. A newly adjusting eye opened as they were kissing and it spotted three other people in the room.

"Hey, guys... I can see!" Team CFVYN hugged out their relief, with Fox being the filling of the giant cuddle huddle. "Velvet, your ears look adorable."

"Thanks Fox. I'm glad you like them."

There was silence in the CFVYN dorm. Any tears that fell were ones of joy and they fell silently. Neo and Fox could have talked, but they didn't.

"So... does someone want to explain?" Fox queried, adding some noise to the silence of the room, "because I don't have a clue what the hell just happened."

" _I think I can explain,_ " Neo signed, speaking the words in her head for Fox. " _Last night, before I drifted off, we talked about how I wanted you to see how everyone was reacting to the dress, but you weren't fazed. After you were asleep, I thought to myself 'I wish you could see them' - those words exactly. That might have something to do with it._ "

"That would make sense," Velvet added, "the Parchment could grant a single wish, right? Maybe that was it. It explains why Fox can now see despite having been blind for his entire life." The team looked at Fox, who looked at them all back. He tried his best to not stare, but when his eyes were still getting used to the whole notion of seeing it was difficult. He always found himself stopping on Neo, the first face he ever saw.

"You used the wish?" The mute nodded, accepting that as the most logical explanation. "Neo, that's it then. We're free from it." She nodded again, the tears pooling up in her eyes again. "We don't _have_ to stay together anymore, we can live our own lives." The mute didn't look pleased about that. "And I don't know about you, but I don't want to live on without you." That's better. And whilst she could have spoken to him in his head, the rest of the team deserved to get in on their little joke, so she signed her answer, then leaned in and kissed him again.

" _Sap._ "

And she couldn't be happier about it.

* * *

 ** _Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol_**

* * *

Now I know some people may be confused as to why I set up the thing in Chapter 17 with them communicating via their telepathic link through their Scrolls only to throw this curveball in and render that useless. Well, how often have you planned something, only for something else to happen and render that plan null and void? That's just what happened here - none of them knew this was going to happen.

Speaking of which, Fox can see now. Surprise, I guess. I wanted to do something different, as most stories depict him as completely blind, so I decided to throw this in. Plus, I wanted the first thing he saw to be Neo

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	30. So Much To See, So Much To Hear

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

Fox was very much happy to be taking things slowly today. He had a whole new sense to be figuring out, and a week to get used to it before classes started up again for semester number five. Wondering out of the dorm and to breakfast was such a new and exciting experience - heck, anything would be. Students all around may grow tired of seeing the same pillars day after day, or the boring looking carpet, but for Fox everything was new and as such everything was exciting. The normally five minute walked turned to ten, and then turned into fifteen. CVY decided to leave the remaining two alone and let Neo help Fox out with whatever she could with his new sight.

"It's so fascinating. I'm sorry Ni, but I just can't get over how colourful everything is. There was really only black, white and the colours of everyone else's Auras before. Now there's so many that I don't even know where to start. How many are there?"

' _How many colours are there?_ ' He nodded. ' _That's quite an ask, there's no real, quantifyable answer; I guess that in theory there'd be decillions of different colours. You could have one colour, but every person sees the same colour with an ever so slight difference. And each colour reacts differently under certain mediums. But going off what I know from working with fabrics and things, there's like 16,000,000 different combinations of true colours - some closer to each other than they'd like to believe._ ' Fox looked at her in amazement at the knowledge she possessed; it was fantastic. She saw him gawking at her and she smirked. ' _Take a picture, it'll last longer._ '

"So that's what your smirk actually looks like. It's cute." She blushed.

' ** _You're_** _cute, pretty boy. But seriously though, you have never explained to me how you could see me when you were blind. Now's the time._ '

"Y'know, in all this time, I've forgotten how..."

' _Are you serious?!_ '

"Dust, no! Can you imagine? No, I'll spill." He took a slight detour and walked to a free bench in the space between the dorm building and the cafeteria - it was so nice being able to see where he was going for once. "My semblance gives me the ability to burst my Aura out and see things around me. It's kind of like echolocation, only more taxing on the body. Even on my best days I could only maintain it for a few minutes, at best. And from that I decided I was going to train myself to improve my skill and push how long I could use it to the limit, but nothing came of it. So I learned a new way of using it. I would burst my Aura out and activate my semblance, then I'd slowly draw my semblance in as I released it, trying to get it to bleed into my natural Aura. Eventually I succeeded, but it still required a forceful burst so see further than 8 metres away, but I could live with that. As time progressed, I figured out that I could see people from further away when I'd been close enough for long enough, and also how to use it without first having to burst my Aura. So, I did that with my family - the first place I wanted and needed to do it.

"My Dad was the first person I truly saw like this; he used to be a Huntsman before he gave it up to follow his dream of having a family with Mom, so his Aura was unlocked and easiest to find. Whilst she hadn't had any formal training whatsoever, Mom's Aura was fairly easy to sense as well. It's what happens - kids grow attached to their parents and links like that were easy. My younger siblings were a problem. The middle sibling, Vulpé, was fidgeting but ultimately sat down long enough for me to establish a connection. Fenneck, the kit of the litter, was squirming and jumping and generally not wanting to stay still. I was lucky that I figured that so long as I was trying to make a connection, he could be asleep and I'd get the same outcome.

"That was my blood family, and that was all I needed at the time. When I came to Beacon, I had to start again. I was hated and mocked by my peers for my inability to see, so much so that I was told three people all saw me and turned and ran so that I wasn't their partner. Yatsuhashi was the only one who stayed. He came close and made himself known, then I caught him with my semblance and that's how I became his partner. When we, along with Coco and Velvet, took the Black Rook we became Team CFVY. I spent a few days familiarising myself with their Aura's and now they're etched into my head. I spent time with the professors, getting to know their Aura signatures - though I never have had the chance to get Prof- _Doctor_ Oobleck's due to his extreme hyperactivity. And with every person's Aura I get accustomed with, I gain some sort of connection and understanding with.

"Grimm were the biggest obstacle. They don't have an Aura. I realised in Port's class that I can sense their lack of Aura, and while I can sense the mass of nothing as a general thing, I couldn't tell what Grimm was what unless I got close for a long time. Boarbatusk and Creeps were the easiest, funnily enough Nevermores came close third once they were nesting. Ursa, King Taijitu, Death Stalkers and Beowolves were increasingly more difficult, especially the last two. That's where a large number of my scars came from." Neo looked down at the boy's exposed arms, eying the faded cuts and scratches on his tanned skin. "Goliath's were easy enough once I was on its back and could stay there long enough - it took much longer than most of the others due to its size, but by far and the worst were Griffons. All I needed was some time.

"And as for why I could see you smirking. Well, I did what I normally did with people I was having to be close with and started familiarising myself with your Aura. It'd normally take me about fifteen to twenty minutes before I'd seen enough to know who a person was and all that constantly. With you, I kind of... dozed off while I was doing it. My eyes were shut, but my brain clearly hadn't shut off completely, because when I woke up I saw your Aura glowing like the sun. That's not an exaggeration either, sometimes it _hurt_ looking at you. In a good way, of course. And your features were so prominent, I could see every detail on your face, just like I can now. I could see someone so vividly for the first time in my life, and every action you took, from your blinking to your smirking, was just as clear as they are to me now.." Once again, he stroked her cheek. She was getting quite used to it; it was soothing. "The only thing was the fact your Aura was multi-coloured, which made it a little awkward at times to see your expressions, but only at first. Now, I don't need to rely on that. I can see you just fine."

' _Wow, that's... a lot to take in. I never knew you had siblings._ '

"Yeah, neither are old enough to even being thinking about training, but Fenneck's got potential. What about you? You never really talked much about your life before."

' _I-_ ' her thoughts were cut off by a loud growl from her stomach. ' _I am really hungry. Can we eat first, then talk about it later?_ '

"Sure, I'm pretty sure I'm feeling the same way as y-" a second growl made itself known, this time from Fox's stomach. "Yup, there it is." He chuckled and rose from his seat, extending an arm and letting Neo take it as they walked to the cafeteria.

Once they got their food, Fox made a quick trip to where Team RWBY was sitting. They weren't second years, but Ozpin always encouraged getting to know your fellow students of any year - "they may be your allies when you are out there defending the world from evil" he always mentioned. The eight of them got on anyway; something that surprised Coco initially was how she bonded over talks of fashion with Yang, who also has had a few lessons from Fox to improve her hand-to-hand combat skills. Velvet stuck to Blake like glue when they first met each other and started studying together, something Blake didn't seem to mind too much, and Ruby was practically fangirling over both Yatsuhashi's and Coco's weapons, something Yatsuhashi found quite endearing and Coco... tolerated. Fox thought they ought to know, he considered them friends.

"Morning guys."

"Hey Fox how are youuuuuu-" Ruby's brain seemed to stop and she held the word for a remarkably long time as she noticed his eyes, along with the rest of her team. Weiss tried to apply reason to it and deduce what had happened.

"What happened to your eyes Fox? They look... normal." She drew a blank.

"They are Weiss. I can see." Weiss and Blake remained mostly silent after that, but they still congratulated him on his miracle sight. A blonde mess of hair flew between the monochromatic teammates and stared right at Fox, her lilac eyes capturing his attention. Yang, being Yang, did what many expected of her.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Fox rolled his eyes at her, something else he was somewhat looking forward to doing more - rolling your eyes always seemed like an interesting gesture in the books he'd read.

"Congratulations Yang, you did the thing. Six." The blonde grinned, insisting that she just wanted to make sure he was definitely not-blind, just like he was previously not-not dead, but in the end she was delighted for him. Weiss had to step in to stop Ruby from passing out.

"Ruby, cut it out, you're turning blue!"

"-uuuuuu..." she took an enormous, over exaggerated breath then quietly replied "Sorry..."

"Hey, so does this mean we could try some more training sessions over the next week?" Yang asked, ignoring the little lover's quarrel beside her.

"Sure, although you may need to be the one in charge. You might have to re-teach _me_ some things - sight's a whole new ballpark for me." The brawler agreed. Ruby hugged him, stating that it was so cool that he could see now, but also that she wasn't sure how that'd happen though. She suggested Robot Ninja Pirates from Space, but her own partner shot the idea down. He gave a very brief recount, stating that it basically all had to do with when he died.

"That's cool, I guess..." she said, trailing off to a mumble as she continued with "not as cool as Robot Ninja Pirates from Space though..."

"Ruby, that's a childlike fantasy scenario from one of your many comics, and you know it."

"Weiss, I've seen you reading my comics, don't pretend you don't like them."

"I have no idea what you are on about, I only read real books."

He bid the non-arguing "couple" on the table a farewell, then went back to his own team and ate. Only when he got back and looked at his food did he realise, it really did look as bad as it tasted. Once that was over, he and Neo walked around the campus and spoke about her past. They did so in their heads out of politeness and caution on the off chance that news got back to someone like Ozpin.

' _You don't **have** to tell me Ni, it was just a suggestion._ '

' _It's alright Fox. Besides, you deserve to know - no one else does..._ '

' _Wait, no one? You've never told anyone else this at all?_ ' His answer came in the form of a shaking head. ' _Got to say though, I have no idea what you see in me. Why trust someone like me, I'm just a dumb Huntsman-in-Training who could blurt anything out._ '

' _First, not funny. Second, you are **my** dumb Huntsman-in-Training. Third, I tell you because I love you. Now shush, and let me explain._ ' Neo unlinked her arm from Fox just so that she could help herself move her hands and express herself more easily.

' _Back when I was much younger, there were many things that were different. I lived in Atlas, I had a family. And I could speak..._ '

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

Backstory time imminent!

Neo rarely gets these I feel, and when she does, they're alright, but mostly downbeat.

Trust me when I say this, but the next chapter won't be all sunshine and rainbows; similarly, it's not going to be death and darkness 24/7 for her either. Neo had a life, had a lot of things, but things went... wrong, for lack of a better word.

But let's start with one important point: "Neo" isn't actually her birth name. Shock horror surprise! It's actually... well, read the title of the next chapter ;) (ain't I a stinker?)

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	31. Orchid Russet

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

The skyline was sparkling with the glare of hundreds of marble white buildings reflecting the Midwinter sun onto the streets below. Citizens of Atlas moved along and went about their days without paying much attention to one another. Vehicles drove by without caring much for the pedestrians on the sidewalk, save for when it mattered. Those who were working their jobs were doing so, and those who had a day off were enjoying the relaxation of having no worries until the sun rose the following morning.

Further out from the main city of Atlas and the Schnee Castle/Manor/Big House - whatever people decided to call it - came the houses of those who worked in the city with their big jobs. Outside of that, came those who were less fortunate, by Atlas standards at least. Living in this area was a very particular family - the Russets.

The Russet household had a few who lived in it. There was Oakley and Yubae Russet - the two parents - who lived with their two children, along with a single servant named Lang. Vinnie Russet was the eldest sibling, three and a half years older than his younger sister, Orchid Russet.

On this particular day of the week, both Oakley and Yubae had a day off at the same time, meaning that they always spent this day as Family Day. Only being five years old at the time, Orchid couldn't do as much as her brother or parents could, but that never meant she didn't try.

"Hey there, what're you doing there Orchid?"

"I try do what V'nn and you and Mommy do"

"And why are you trying to do that? It's things that we older people can do so that you won't get hurt."

"But I want try!" Oakley couldn't stay mad at his beautiful daughter. Her hair and eyes both shone a brilliant pink in the wintery Atlas sunshine and even through all of that her smile outshone it all.

"Okay, sweetie, but Mommy or Daddy _needs_ to help you when you do this. Okay?"

"'Kay!" she beamed and skipped off as best she could to grab her mother's leg.

As the next couple of years went on, Orchid became more and more adept at things they did on Family Day, matching even her now eleven year old brother's capabilities in some cases, even at seven and a half. Orchid could bake simple things like cookies and cupcakes, she'd been taught how to sew on a button after she had insisted on being taught - though she needed to wear special gloves that reduced or completely nullified the pain from any pinprick she received. Above all else, she could sing until her throat was sore, then she'd sing some more after having her 'Magical Singing Milkshake' (it was all three flavours of powdered milkshake they sold in the stores poured into one glass and stirred to make this horrible looking concoction that surprisingly didn't taste half as revolting as it looked. It needed to have more strawberry powder than chocolate or vanilla though. Strawberry was her favourite because "it was pink like her hair and like her eyes and Mommy's hair and Mommy's eyes"). Apparently only she could have it though, or else everyone else would become amazing singers and she'd be 'out of a job' - something Yubae loved hearing.

But one day Lang, who was treated less like a servant and therefore acted more like an extended member of the family, noticed something about little Orchid that worried him. Her natural pink hair, a trait she inherited from her mother, was fading quite rapidly to brown, but only from one of her head. There were parts in her pink half of her head that were decolouring completely in stands, leaving essentially white highlights in her hair. Her eyes were changing too, they would shift constantly between colours, especially when she was upset or angry. That didn't stop her from being the same bundle of joy they saw almost every day, but it was concerning nonetheless. Lang spoke with the parents one night when the children were asleep.

"What should we do sir? Ms. Orchid's condition seems to be worsening day by day."

"I appreciate your concern for my daughter's wellbeing Lang, truly. There may not be a lot we can do though."

"What about the hospital dear?" Yubae mentioned to her spouse and servant that the Atlas Hospital has the best medical care on Remnant, surely there is something that they could do. "I believe it's worth a shot at the very least."

"...Yes, I suppose there would be no harm in trying. I love my little pink flower and I'd want her to be as healthy as she possibly can. Schooling for her starts in a few months and I wouldn't want her being bullied for such an abnormality."

"I shall take her to the hospital in the morning; say it's a routine check-up or something to not raise any suspicions from her."

"Very well Lang. Thank you." The three adults took their leave and went to bed that night, not knowing it was one of the last good nights they'd have as a family.

Lang took Orchid to the Atlas General Hospital the very next morning once Oakley had gone to work and Yubae had taken Vinnie to school.

"Uncle Lang, why am I going to the hospital? Am I sick?"

"No my flower, you're not sick. Mommy and Daddy just need you to go to make sure everything is alright with you. It's a routine check-up"

"What does 'routine' mean?"

"It just means run of the mill, Orchid. Something that you do every so often that isn't because something bad happened to you, but to stop something bad happening."

"Is that why I'm going? Because something bad is going to happen to me?"

"No Orchid, you're fine. Just relax, we'll be there in a few minutes." Lang had to make his lie sound as convincing as possible - there was no guarantee she was okay. They arrived at the building, a pristine white structure crafted with elegant design, and made their way to the desk. A woman sat there with her blonde hair tied neatly in a bun at the back and her glasses sat on the bridge of her nose.

"Welcome to the AGH, how may I be of assistance today?"

"Yes, Ms. Orchid here is in need of examining. Her hair and eyes are showing uncharacteristic abnormalities and I have been sent on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Russet to see that she is."

"Of course sir. If you'd like to wait over there, someone will show her to the room as soon as possible."

"Thank you." The pair sat on the blue seats nearby, Orchid rocking her legs backwards and forwards impatiently as she watched the second hand of a clock on the wall slowly turn.

"Uncle Lang, why did you call me Ms. Russet? I thought I was Orchid."

"You are. You are Ms. Orchid Russet. I just need to be much more formal when I'm out of the house and in a place like this, it's part of my little job."

"Oh. Okay." Orchid was a bright girl, she knew that whenever Uncle Lang talked about his little job she wasn't allowed to question him any further. It's not that it was too difficult of a job to explain - he was the servant to the Russet Household - it's more the fact that her little world might fall apart if she knew that Uncle Lang was just supposed to be Lang the Butler. They waited about fifteen minutes before someone called out her name.

"Uncle Lang, that was me!"

"Yes it was my flower. Now come on, we don't want to keep them waiting do we?"

"Nope!" She hopped out of the seat and walked into the room, Lang sitting in the chair nearby whilst people worked to finish off readying the machines for her. "Is this all for me?"

"Yes it is my dear," one of the Atlas doctor's said "we just need to test a few things and get to know a bit more about you and how you work inside. Once we have that... well, we'll take things one step at a time." Another doctor handed Lang a hospital gown and told him that she will most likely need to change into it at some point.

"With what you are looking for, we're going to need to do some more intense examinations; scans, blood samples and the like. These are essentially the pre-tests so that we don't do something wrong for the real ones."

"I understand, thank you." The doctor looked back at the young girl, idly chatting away to one of the doctors without a care in the world. "Your daughter really is beautiful."

"She isn't my daughter I'm afraid. I'm merely..." he brought his voice down to a whisper "...the Butler, but don't tell her." He spoke normally again. "I'm her Uncle Lang, and I'll do anything for her." The man shot her a smile as she grinned a toothy grin back.

"I see Mr. Lang. Well, we'll look after her no matter what."

True to the second doctor's word, the first lot of test were to calibrate certain machines in the room and other rooms for Orchid. Simple test, compared to the tests that followed. They did a CAT Scan and an MRI Scan to look inside her head and see what might have started this thing, but results came up negative on both. They took a few small samples of blood, small enough to get readings quickly without having to wait too long. Those results showed no signs of abnormality. It was only when they got to the Aura scan did something crop up. The doctors told Lang, who left the room immediately and contacted Oakley to inform him.

"That... explains a few things at least."

"I agree sir, _heterochromia borealis_ ; quite rare indeed and apparently one of the most extreme cases they've seen. The fact her Aura is shifting so greatly may explain why her hair and eyes are also changing. There is no definitive proof on that last part, it's just a theory at the moment, but it's all they can say that could explain it."

"I see." There was a quiet between the two men; Lang waiting for his master to speak whilst Oakley went through many different possibilities in his head.

"Sir?"

"...What could they suggest that'll help it?" The butler was a bit confused at the statement.

"Help it?"

"Help _calm_ it, I should say. Stop her Aura from being so all over the place and bring it to a single sustainable level that doesn't put my baby girl in harm's way."

"I did not check with them sir, but I am unsure what they can do. Besides, she has DAG Syndrome and every case that has been recorded hasn't been fatal nor, in most cases, does it hinder a person in any way. All it does is make the Aura a bit all over the place, but nothing a good teacher couldn't straighten up."

"I am aware Lang," he snapped, something very unlike him. Lang held the Scroll away from his ear on the off chance that he may raise his voice again, but that never happened. Quite the opposite, now he spoke in nothing more than terrified whispers. "I am aware. I just don't want to lose her. She's my little Orchid, Lang. _Our_ little Orchid." There was a small sniffle on his end of the line before he rounded himself off. "Just see what they can do for her." The line went dead.

Lang passed the parent's comments on to the doctors, who prescribed a shot of a medicine that hadn't been in circulation for very long but was having near perfect results throughout both testing phases and early trials. The medicine worked almost like an anti-inflammatory for the Aura, calming it down to work itself much slower than it normally would. The nulling effects should last a year, then afterwards a booster shot can be given every 3 years. He agreed and Orchid was given the shot, then was cleared to go home.

"Uncle Lang, I'm hungry."

"Me too kiddo." He spotted something coming up ahead of them, then grinned to himself. "Hey Orchid~" he sang, "Do you like ice cream?" The high pitched squeal from the back seat meant yes.

The two of them went in and ordered ice cream. Lang went for a 'Grown Up ice cream', and naturally that raised some questions from the inquisitive seven year old.

"I'd tell you, but that means _everybody_ would know, then it wouldn't be a secret Grown Up ice cream, now would it?" The girl slammed her hands against her mouth to silence herself. Orchid muffled through her hands that she wanted three ice creams in her favourite flavours, but Lang had a better idea. "You can't have that Orchid."

"Why not? I want them."

"I'm only letting you have one ice cream. But before you start kicking and screaming," he preempted as he saw the girl start to take a deep breath in like she did when the screaming and/or crying was about to start, "I have a better idea for you."

"Better than a strawberry or vanilla or chocolate ice cream?"

"Yup, much better. It's an ice cream made just for you." He booped her on the nose as her eyes widened in glee.

"For me? I get my own ice cream?"

"Not exactly, but it's made for someone who likes them all but is only allowed to have one," he glanced up at her hair and decided to incorporate it, "and for people with multi-coloured hair like you too. It's called Neapolitan ice cream."

"Neo-politan?"

"Nearly Orchid. It's ice cream with all three of your favourite flavours in it at once." She gasped.

"Really?!"

"Really. One Neapolitan ice cream please." He handed over a few more Lien and within a minute was handed his own Rum and Raisin ice cream and Orchid's Neapolitan. She was in heaven the second she saw it. It became her favourite thing ever.

* * *

Months later, shortly after she had turned 8, things took a terrible turn for her. The shot she was given back in the hospital 6 months ago worked fine for the time being, her Aura had calmed down drastically and remained ivory white throughout that time. But after, it reacted negatively. The sweet little voice of Orchid suffered as a result. Her Aura went crazy, taking her voice away as it tried to combat itself inside of her body. There was nothing doctors, or anyone, could do to save it. The Aura tired itself out of its own accord, settling down to a standstill after it had done the damage. The only plus side to the whole endeavour was that Neo discovered her semblance; the ability to effectively teleport - although with how her Aura behaved it meant that every time she did it looked like her 'old' body shattered like glass.

Yubae was devastated at what had happened to her little girl, as was Oakley but none more so than Lang. Orchid's parents worked a lot, so he looked after her when she was growing up more than they did. He grew close to her and cared for her like his own, despite only being part of this household as a job. He couldn't face her for weeks when her voice disappeared. They learnt from the doctors that because of how it reacted with her, the condition had become contagious in her. She had to remain housebound in near isolation for years for it to be purged from her system to a level that meant she could venture outside once again. They relocated to a larger abode so that she could still wonder around without feeling claustrophobic. After fruitless efforts to try and restore her voice, they hired the best person they could find and helped teach Orchid Sign Language; one of the few ways she'd ever be able to communicate again. She picked it up easily, was conversational in 10 days and was fluent in less than 30.

Orchid made the most of her time away from everyone else. Her sewing skills grew exponentially to the point where she could make fairly detailed garments in weeks, and she trained herself in sword fighting. Well, the basics at least. And she didn't have a sword to train with. Luckily, there were plenty of umbrellas lying around the house, so she used them as weapons instead. By her 9th birthday, Orchid much preferred her own company over everyone else's, even her own family. Vinnie came into her room one day to try and speak with her, a bowl of ice cream in her lap as she stared at her Scroll.

" _Hey sis. How's it going?_ "

" _Good. I've got a lot better at sword fighting, though it's difficult to practice without someone else there._ "

" _Well, I'm here. I can help._ "

" _I don't want you to hurt me Vin. And before you say I won't, you very well might. I've practiced what I can find, but there are so many things on defensive techniques, and hardly any on offensive ones, saying that 'offense comes from the person, not a technique'._ "

" _Orchid, you need to trust me when I say I think you can handle yourself against me. I want to be a Huntsman, even though I know it probably may never happen. Atlas is constantly pushing me further away from the combat classes and more towards the ones that'll prove 'more beneficial for my future', i.e. not what I want. So much like you, I practice away from the prying eyes of Professors. I train myself to at least get a chance to do something. If I fail then, that is when I give up. Not before._ " He stood up and walked over to the umbrella in the corner of the room and chucked it over to her, picking up two tri-pronged candelabra for himself. "C'mon, let's get some practice in." She smiled and accepted the challenge.

Years passed. Vinnie got accepted into Atlas and sailed through the first three years. He even got accepted onto the final year program and would be starting that in a few weeks. Orchid was so proficient with the umbrella that decided the first thing she'd do when she left here was helping make a combat one, with a hidden blade. But she knew that she couldn't stay at home. She sat down with everyone to talk to them about this, and she believed she'd be met with protest. Nothing of the sort.

" _You're... letting me leave?_ "

"Of course Orchid. We don't want you here forever - as much as it hurts for us to say that - but when you do leave soon, there's nothing we can do anymore. You're already self-sufficient, you don't need us."

" _But I want you. You're my family._ "

"We always will be, my flower," Lang said, his once raven hair now grey from stress about Orchid's safety, "but every bird must fly the nest eventually." She smiled as she hugged him, then turned to the rest of her family.

"We're going to miss having our little girl here" Oakley sighed, "but Lang is right."

" _When I leave, I'm going to do things I normally wouldn't have dreamed of. I'm going to fight, but I'll keep my crafting as a hobby. You won't know it's me unless you saw me - I'm going to have a whole new identity. You'll be safe from any backlash, because I want you safe._ " Everyone nodded.

That night, Orchid said goodbye to her parents, brother and Uncle one last time. The truth slipped about him only being the butler, but Orchid didn't care - he was still Uncle Lang to her. With tears and a final hug for all, Orchid left her home and never returned. Orchid never came home. Someone similar did though. Every so often, an emerald eyed girl with jet black hair wearing a skirt and blouse came to visit. Her name was Cherry, and she was welcomed in every time like it was her home. It was.

Orchid left Atlas and promptly died. In her place stood the new person she chose to be. She was sly and mischievous, and carried a parasol with a hidden blade in it. That wasn't the only thing she wanted to carry to remember her family by. She changed her name to reflect the colours she sported in her hair, and to remember her favourite food as introduced to her by her Uncle. She was Neo. And she had her first mission: destroy any and all traces she had of her past life.

* * *

' _Wow..._ ' Fox whispered, the reality of Neo's situation hitting him like a tonne of bricks. ' _So, you left your family and turned to crime to survive?_ '

' _Yeah. It was tough at first, but I got a break one night and I kept moving from there. Had my first "encounter" a year down the line, and then seven years later we're here. It's weird though, every time I go to Atlas I always pop by to see Mom and Dad. They don't change, and they always expect to hear the craziest stories of how I killed this guy or did that to another._ '

' _Wait, they don't mind your actions?_ '

' _They did. Hated it at first. But over time they came to realise that they're sitting with Orchid but talking to "Cherry" - two different people, and so these stories to them are just fantasies from their little girl's mind._ ' A tear fell from her eye, surprising her as she didn't even feel it welling up at all. ' _Never told them about the sex though, that'd just be weird. I was never taught anything about it, and in all honesty what do you expect from someone who is housebound throughout puberty with literally no outlet? I know no different, and as such a lot of people call me out on it, saying I just act like a horny kid, jumping on anyone who vaguely interests me. And that's... kind of true, but I didn't know what else to do. So I did what I have_ _always_ _done, only this time I got a little too attached. But did you see that tail, how could I not?_ ' she added, trying to bring the mood up a bit.

' _You are one brave woman Ni. I don't think there ever has or will be anyone as brave as you. And you don't need to justify what you did in the past, it's gone now. Live in the here and now, it's more fun._ '

' _Thanks Fox._ ' She leaned across and rested her head on his shoulder. ' _You always know just what to say to make things better._ '

* * *

 _ **Chapter Beta - EnigmaProtocol**_

* * *

I don't think I've seen something like this for any Neo origin before, so add that to the list of weird and wonderful things I've done / am probably yet to do in this story that's a little bit different.

Now, onto the next chapter. Even though the holidays are in full swing as this chapter is going up, I'll still be uploading regularly on a Thursday because a) it doesn't really affect me and b) Christmas doesn't wait for retail workers (yay...), so I still only have evenings to write things out.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	32. A Long Time Coming

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Hey, **PixelMoon**. You were right [see below]

* * *

Neo and Fox were woken by a squeal. It was so loud and so high pitched that it probably would have woken Blake and a few other Faunus across the campus as well, despite the fact that Blake was a floor down and on the other side of the complex. And coming from Coco, no doubt, made the two in the other bed stare.

"It worked Velv! It worked!"

"By 'it'," Fox groaned, "I hope you mean 'Soundproofing the Dorm', because I do _not_ want to be spending the rest of this holiday trapped with Goodwitch..."

' _I dunno, I always found using riding crops was quite pleasurable._ '

"You stop that, right now."

' _What?_ '

"I've got a Mark! We're Mated Velv!" The leader couldn't contain her excitement at the sight, jumping about more than a child during the Holidays seeing presents under the tree. "Oum, this feels amazing!" She stroked her shoulder as if it was a pet, then bounded over to the once sleeping couple to show them. "Look! Isn't it cool?" On her shoulder was Coco's emblem, but as you went outwards from the centre it grew more and more abstract until it became a mass of hard light blue lines and whirls that rough formed a heart shape. Connecting that all together though were two circles of light; one of caramel, the other a deep scarlet.

"That's really cool Coco, but-"

"I _know!_ I can't believe it, we're Mates! Oh, this feels so wonderful... but at the same time really exhausting..."

"No Coco..." a voice strained from underneath the pillow beside her, "that exhaustion is me, actively projecting my feelings to you..."

"We can do that?"

"Yes... and as I am _trying_ to tell you, I am tired and would appreciate it if you'd stop parading that about to our team. We have another two years here, they are going to see it at some point."

"But hunny-bun, I just want them to see it now. I'm proud of what we are-"

"Yeah, I can tell through the Mark."

"-I'm proud but at the same time realising I might not get to show it off too much."

"First," she groaned, clicking her fingers and sitting up, "every Faunus in Vale will be able to detect a new Mates Mark, so they'll all know. Second, we'll have to find a way of showing that off _later._ And speaking of later; third, you made me do this." There was no time to react as a pillow was suddenly latched on to Coco's face, her scream muffled by the feathers. Twenty six seconds later, Coco was sleeping again. Groggy but satisfied with his work, Yatsuhashi waddled back to bed, placing the bottle of infused lavender oil and chloroform back in his drawer, his pillow back on his bed - oil soaked side down, of course, and pulled the covers up to return to the World of Snooze as if nothing had happened.

"Do not ever mention to anyone how we get her to sleep," she threatened, glaring at Fox and Neo with the eyes of a Huntress ready to kill, "sometimes it's our only sure fire and most effective method of getting her to sleep. Alcohol is a close second, but we aren't made of money. Also, I want to sleep now, not later." Then she returned to sleep as well.

' _Not exactly how I was expecting to be woken up this morning,_ ' Fox admitted.

' _Me either,_ ' was the mute woman's response as she snuggled up closer to her boyfriend, ' _but at least that means I get to wake up next to you twice today._ '

' _Ever the optimist._ ' The couple quickly kissed, then settled back down to return to enjoy what little sleep they could grab.

Across the campus, Blake was sat on her bed clutching her Faunus ears in pain, her tired eyes staring at the wall in the exact direction of Team CFVYN's dorm.

' _I fucking hate you sometimes Coco..._ ' she thought to herself as she realised the high pitched squeals had subsided, releasing her ears. To make sure everything was okay, she made her way to the bathroom to get some cotton wool buds and clean her ears, hoping that all she'd get was earwax and not copious amounts of blood.

* * *

Team CFVYN decided they would take a trip into Vale today to get a few things; Coco was still adamant that she was going to show all of Remnant her and Velvet's Mate Marks off to everyone and so they decided they'd go out for a nice meal to celebrate and show it off there. This is, if everyone hadn't already seen it by then. Everyone wore much more casual clothes than their usual combat outfits, with the exception of Fox who honestly didn't have much in the way of casual wear, just many different versions of his black jeans and muted orange vest. Coco and Neo were going to fix that today though.

Coco was there in a pair of dark fashionable knee length shorts and a slate grey tank top that showed off her shoulder perfectly; but on the off chance the weather turned she also had a chequered shirt tied around her waist. And of course, her signature sunglasses and beret, though she admitted she wouldn't be too fussed if Velvet wanted to take it and help her complete her own outfit.

"How will the beret help Coco?"

"I love it when you wear my stuff, I just think it'd look especially good with what you're wearing." The Faunus wore a tank top to expose her shoulder much like her girlfriend, she carried her camera on the belt that held up her faded blue jeans and she wore a pair of platform shoes to bring her up closer to Coco's height. The shy Faunus started blushing, normally she'd bite back at her girlfriend in private, but in public she stepped back from that and was much more subdued, though in her defence she was trying to let the Velvet Team CFVYN see in private to spill out slightly into the Velvet everyone else sees.

Yatsuhashi wore a large green hoodie with the sleeves rolled up and some simple sand coloured cargo pants - he wasn't a big fan of the weather in and around Vale, he never had been, so he always preferred to err on the side of caution when it came to what he'd wear going out.

"Also, a hoodie and cargo pants offer much more protection from an attack that shorts would." The girls and Fox couldn't argue there.

Neo walked hand in hand with Fox wearing a light cream sun dress, white pumps and a small hat that had a little pink feather protruding from the rim. Whilst Velvet's platforms brought her up to more of the level of the rest of their team and left Neo in the dust, the feather was fairly big and did help a little bit; in comparison to everyone else though she was still fairly tiny. And of course, she would be Neo if she wasn't wondering round in public with her trusty parasol on her shoulder, it wasn't open but she twirled it round all the same.

The team made their way to an establishment Coco knew well. It didn't cater to her needs all the time, but when it did the quality was amazing.

"Hello there madam, how can I help today?"

"Hi, we're just here to get some things for my friend here. We found him when he was but a lost cause, but we've finally got him to see reason."

"Coco I'm right here, I can hear what you're saying about me."

"Way to ruin the fun, Fox." She turned back to the Faunus who greeted them who she caught looking at her Mark. "It's just some casual wear for him, something nice as well if you have it."

"Of course. If you'd like to follow my colleague sir." There was a brief pause as Fox and Neo looked at each other.

"My girlfriend wants to know if she could come along with me? She loves her fashion, and says she wants to make sure my stuff doesn't clash with her own outfit."

"That's fine sir; you may follow as well then madam." Neo smiled as she walked after Fox. The Faunus at the desk, a Dog Faunus if their eyes weren't deceiving them, turned back to the three waiting there and smiled at the team leader. "I noticed your Mark madam, congratulations. Who's the lucky Faunus then?" Velvet was reluctant to step forward, so Coco shuffled back and put her arm down to let Velvet grab her hand for comfort. The Dog made no such efforts to oppose at all. "Congratulations to you as well madam; you both seem to have found an amazing partner."

"Thank you," the mage said as her face started beaming. It was the first time that she'd gotten a verbal acknowledgement of their status as Mates and it made her feel giddy with delight - Coco was _hers,_ and no Faunus was going to take that away from her anymore; hopefully the humans would get that idea soon as well.

Fox was sent into the changing rooms with the first of many things for him to try on whilst Neo sat outside the room waiting. The ice cream girl opened up her Scroll when she heard it ping to see a message from Velvet.

 **V - 'Hey, Coco and I are heading off with Yatsu. Coco said we might as well do our thing whilst you two do yours'**

 **N - 'Makes sense. What's your plan?'**

 **V - 'Not a clue. Yatsu said he'd take us somewhere.'**

 **N - 'Nice. Enjoy x'** Neo paused for a second before she smirked as a thought crossed her mind. Making sure Fox was still changing, she quickly replied to her teammate again. **'Actually, do you think you can take your time? I'd like to have a little time with Fox back at the dorm'**

 **V - 'I'm sure we could, but why?'**

 **N - 'What would most couples with a lot of time, a free room and no one else around do? ;)'**

 **V - 'Careful what you write Neo, Fox isn't blind anymore'** That bit of information genuinely slipped her mind for a moment. That would have been embarrassing... or may have broken the ice - one of the two. **'Coco says "Whoop whoop, get 'em on the Bang Bus", so I guess that means she's okay with it. As am I and Yatsu'** Coco had a weird way of expressing herself sometimes, but the group's approval meant that Neo had a second chance to do this.

 **N - 'Thank the others for me. And tell Coco that I'm not sending her pictures, she'll understand'** Once she had sent that final message she closed the Scroll down and put it back in the little pocket she sewed on her dress - which idiot thought it was a good idea _not_ to put pockets on an item of clothing? Just as Fox was about to leave the changing room her Scroll pinged again, she'd have to wait to see what it said. Fox walked out and spotted himself in the mirror as he passed. This was the first time he'd seen himself in anything but pyjamas and his regular clothes, so it came as a shock to his system.

"Well, I like what this mirror has to say, but what about you Ni? You're probably the best mirror I have around here." She stood there for a moment to take in her boyfriend. He held himself so much better now than she had ever seen him before, the suit was making him more confident inside and it was showing with how he acted on the outside. The fact he could see himself probably helped that fact.

' _Even if I could speak hun,_ ' Neo admitted as she finally walked over to him, fixing a few bits that were loose or out of place on his outfit, then took the untied tie from his hand, ' _I'd be left speechless. You look fantastic!_ ' Fox looked at himself again, squared against the mirror and smiled. Fox stood there in a coffee brown, two-buttoned two piece suit. The notch lapel had a pin hole that was threaded with a bronze thread, much like the top-stitching that lined the outside of the lapel and the jacket pockets. Neo couldn't help herself looking at how well the suit fitted Fox's shape; even with the body of a Huntsman-in-Training this suit off the peg suit fitted him like a dream. As Neo tied the tie in a simple knot so that he could see what his complete outfit looked like she continued observing what he wore. The inner lining of the suit was the colour of red wine and it played really well with the colour of the suit. His shoes were a very deep maroon colour. They weren't black, nor were they burgundy but more like a dark enough red that brought the lining and the shoes together subtly, although the black would have worked well with the colour of the buttons on the suit.

' _There, all done_ ' she announced as she grabbed Fox's tie to pull him into a kiss, something he clearly wasn't expecting, then she took a step back to let him look at himself in the outfit in full. He looked so different, he looked _completely_ different. But he liked it. And though Neo loved the colours they gave him for the shirt and tie, a deep blue shirt and a tie to match the lining, the mute had other ideas.

"So, what's the expert's verdict?"

' _Well as good as I think you look_ _ **in**_ _the suit, you're very lucky that we're in a public place and that there's a man on the other side of the room because I would have been very happy to find out how good you looked_ _ **out**_ _of it._ '

' _What's wrong with that? I wouldn't have stopped you._ '

' _Oh, so you'd rather we had some fun here in this place where we could potentially get caught and thrown out over a nice comfy dorm room back at Beacon that I have been told will most definitely be empty of our teammates until early evening?_ '

' _Well when you put it like that..._ ' he teased, kissing her again and biting on her bottom lip ever so slightly causing the woman's temperature to rise a little at his taunt, ' _you might have convinced me..._ '

' _You're just trying to make it as difficult as possible, aren't you?_ '

' _Maybe..._ ' he winked. "So, the verdict."

' _I'll tell you, but you'll need to relay some information, opinions and the like to the gentleman outside, if that's okay._ '

"Of course hun." Once they'd deliberated, Fox came outside to speak with the man who was dealing with them. "We'll take the suit and the shoes, that's for certain. But could you possible send someone in there who knows Sign to speak with my girlfriend or if you could just take the tablet in there, she wants to have someone to show her what you have on offer in terms of colours of shirts and ties, but she doesn't want the surprise ruined for me."

"Of course sir." Without even pausing for thought the man took the tablet with him into the room were Neo was currently waiting.

"Well," he said to himself a little disappointed as he wondered back to the changing room to wait for the new clothes, "that means there's no one here who knows Sign then..."

The man left the room after Neo had chosen the colours she wanted Fox to wear, then turned her attention back to her Scroll. It had two messages on it, one arriving not too shortly after the first - must have been distracted by a certain someone's dashing good looks to notice it coming in.

 ** _2 Unread Messages_**

 **V - 'I don't think she was too keen on that'**

 **C - 'You bitch, you promised me! :'('** Neo replied to the second person. She was taken aback at the request initially and naturally she was curious as to why. She thought it would have been some massively elaborate reason, but instead it was quite simply:

"I spend too much time looking at Velvet's ass to notice Fox's. Plus a picture will last longer." Made sense.

 **N - 'It's gonna be a maybe, if we're not having too much fun and I forget :P'** She decided that she wasn't going to look at her Scroll anymore, so she put it back in her pocket and left it there. Fox came out of the changing room once again and made a beeline for Neo, ignoring the mirrors completely.

"What about this one?"

' _And we have a winner. Let's get this paid for now, we'll grab some casual clothes on the way to the till._ '

"Sure thing Ni."

True to their word, on the way to the till they picked up some very basic casualwear for Fox; a few t-shirts, some trousers, a hoodie and a pair of casual footwear before heading back to Beacon. They made it to the dorm and Fox had to shoot off somewhere very quick. In that time, Neo threw her sundress off and her bra, sent a single message to CVY and sat waiting on the bed. When Fox came back, he saw Neo and almost instantly mirrored her state of undress. They locked lips by the end of the bed, then Neo pulled away and Fox let the question on his mind come to the forefront and onto his tongue.

"Is this what you were looking for last time? For me to see you?" She nodded rather sheepishly, something that was a little foreign for Fox to see on his girlfriend. To calm her fears and doubts, her leaned across again and whispered in her ear, "I love you Neo. I think you look beautiful." And then, she leaned back so that her spine lay against the mattress, his body following her down.

Neo's message pinged through on all of their Scrolls at once.

 **N - Tweet, tweet! Birds are in the nest**

"Our little Fox cub is finally growing up" Coco sighed, pretending to be overly emotional and wiping a non-existent tear from her eye. The giant raised an eyebrow at her actions.

"You have a very weird way of showing your emotions sometimes Coco."

"It's part of my charm."

CVY returned to their dorm that evening to see Fox dozing off under the covers of his own bed, shirtless (what they assumed would also mean pants-less and underwear-less) and with a noticeable grin on his face. Neo left the bathroom in a hoodie a few sizes too big for her and spotted the three, a grin forming on her own face as she saw them. Coco walked up to her and gave her a quick little pat on the back as congratulations. The smaller woman then took her Scroll out and showed the team leader a couple of pictures she had recently taken, all of them showcasing the bare behind of her partner. Coco gave the woman a quick kiss on the forehead, then she smirked as she wrapped an arm around her as they both stared at the exhausted boy in front of them.

* * *

What a chapter to end the year on, eh? We have our primary couple finally doing the deed (smutlessly, I might add, because I am terrible at producing any kind of lewd writing) and our secondary couple have Mated (if you want probably the best example, read **OmegaInfinity** 's ' **Linked in Life and Love** ' - it's a Pollination story that heavily involves Mate's Marks. Heck, they are the main object of the story, I'd say. And I won't spoil it if you do want to read it, but for those who are currently reading and are up to date, know that I won't go as far as they did with what it can do.

So obviously, this year has been amazing for me. Having only started on this site back in March, I've done so much that it feels surreal to me. I have written more words than I ever thought I could, and I've even read more than seemed healthy (easily 1.2 Million words read). So thank you all for doing everything for me and the rest of the users of this website, and I'll see y'all in 2018!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	33. Buried Truths

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Once Fox had been woken up from his little nap, the five of them all got ready for their evening out. He and Yatsuhashi waited a while before they got started, as they didn't need as much time. When they left, they passed Professor Ozpin on their way to the ship into Vale.

"Good evening Team CFVY, I trust you are all doing well. And hello to you too, Ms. Neo - nice to see you again. Though I am surprised at how long you have been spending with these students."

"Sir I-" Coco started, but was stopped before she could continue by Ozpin raising a hand.

"I have a feeling I know what you are about to say or ask, so I must tell you that, at present, I cannot give you definitive answer. But the plot of the story that is our lives may dictate that we meet again soon. For now, enjoy your meal." With a sip from his cup, he walked away. Once he'd rounded the corner completely, CFVYN started walking again. Neo wasn't going to let what he said slide.

" _Okay, is he always that cryptic and foreboding? Because I don't understand how he runs Beacon with things like that._ " Neo never quite knew how to get all the frustration and confusion out when she signed, but sometimes she had to make do.

"Most people think he doesn't run Beacon." Coco looked around to make sure there weren't any impressionable underclassmen around, but decided to Sign anyway so that the vast majority of the group could understand - Fox was still lacking in that knowledge but he could learn the basics before classes began again. " _Most of us think Glynda does all the hard work while he sits up in his tower watching us all, sipping his tea or coffee or whatever it is in that cup of his and spouting half-truths and part of the facts._ "

"Whilst I _do_ enjoy sitting watching my students from above," Ozpin chimed in, having heard their entire non-verbal conversation and appeared out of nowhere again, frightening anything from a shift in eye colour to an "Eep!" to a full on scream from one of the students, a feat the Headmaster never would have expected from someone like Yatsuhashi, "I do feel the need to inform you that I in fact do a lot more than what you and a large portion of this school think I do."

"How did you-?"

"As Ms. Adel can attest to, once every three weeks I will call a team leader's meeting to discuss the progress of each team and how they feel their team is advancing in their studies, their combat skills and a unit as a whole and what methods they have used to try and rally them together; none, I must say, have ever topped yours Ms. Adel in terms of effectiveness - equally so have I ever suggested a method never be replicated by any other team. The first years that tried to replicate your 'CAME Games' were in the Infirmary for at least a week each."

"There's a reason they're call _CAME_ Games..." she muttered under her breath in frustration. "'Coco Adel', not-"

"Yes I quite understand the meaning behind its name Ms. Adel; you _did_ tell me yourself when I first asked about your methods."

"Oh... yeah."

"Besides all of that, I need to read through reports from said leaders regarding of any sort of mission they undertake. Speaking of which." He grabbed an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Coco. She took it with caution, which the green clad man sighed at. "Oh come now, why would I do something nefarious against my own students? No, this is just payment for your report on the Nuckelavee Grimm. Professor Port was most interested and amazed at your collective ability to take it down, and the fact you were in the right frame of minds to think about documenting it as well. You were quite the leader Ms. Adel."

"Whilst I'd love to take credit for that sir, that was all Neo. She was the one who was taking the photos and getting us to attack it certain ways to show off everything it could do - I played no part in that."

"Well, many congratulations to you Ms. Neo; whilst you all kept quite a level head during that whole encounter, you had enough sense to capture what it can do. I applaud your resolve." The woman smiled and shrugged, clearly not wanting to be the centre of attention at the moment. Fox smiled too and wrapped his arm around her waist, showing his support. "That payment in there should at the very least cover you for the meal you are planning to go on tonight, which I must say you all look extremely striking for. Now, I shan't keep you any longer - have fun with your evening." The quintet all turned to walk away again, but Ozpin called once more. "Mr. Alistair, Ms. Neo; if I may?"

"We won't be long, we promise. Go on ahead." Coco, Velvet and Yatsuhashi all nodded and started walking away leaving Fox and Neo with the Headmaster.

"I wanted to congratulate you on your sight Mr. Alistair. I take it that means the artefact will no longer be bothering you?"

"It... seems that way, yes."

"Excellent. How did you decide by the way?" Fox knew it, there was always something that Ozpin never mentioned about anything.

"Decide what sir?"

"What the wish was going to be."

"We didn't sir; Neo made the wish whilst we were drifting off to sleep a couple of nights ago. I had no say in it."

"Is that so?" he questioned with a raised eyebrow and a knowing look, something that slightly unnerved the two of them and also caught Velvet's attention upon hearing it. "Because it was my belief that you both needed to have the same wish and desire for this to work." He smiled, offering no more than that as he turned away and walked off. "Enjoy your meal." The pair of them said nothing and did nothing for a few seconds before slowly making their way down the path to catch up with the rest of the group.

' _Fox, what does he mean?_ '

"No idea, but let's not worry about that now, whatever 'it' is. Let's just enjoy ourselves." She nodded in agreement, but deep down she was going to get the answer she wanted. What did he mean by what he said?

* * *

The five of them didn't have to walk very far from where they were dropped off to get to the restaurant they were going to. The way they all looked and moved down the street turned many heads. Fox was in his suit and shoes from earlier, but instead of the navy blue shirt and maroon tie they gave him, he was instead wearing the colours that Neo had picked out for him; a pink shirt with a light cream tie, all rounded off with a vibrant orange pocket hankie with slight golden decorations. It all matched Neo, who was wearing a dress that stopped just below knee length. It was a soft pink in colour with faux gems decorating the neck line like a necklace of dark brown. She also wore ivory coloured gloves that went up to the middle of her forearm that were very plain, if not for the newly added band of vibrant orange that Neo had sewn around the bottom end - the same colour and pattern as Fox's pocket hankie.

Velvet wore the dress Coco bought for her, whilst Coco wore the gown that Neo made for her - albeit with her weapon attached to the back as well. Yatsuhashi wore a charcoal grey tweed looking 3 piece suit that he complimented it with a muted sky blue shirt and an olive green knitted tie, a tie clip and, had the rota been kept from before, his Greatsword. Team CFVY implemented a rule that says two members should always be carrying their weapons on them in the event that something happens; and unfortunately for them, it was supposed to be Yatsuhashi's turn on this occasion, something he didn't mind. They decided instead to let it settle with Fox instead, as a Greatsword would definitely draw a lot of attention, whereas retractable bladed gauntlets wouldn't so much.

They approached the restaurant doors and stepped inside, taking in the scenery. The walls were decorated with fine art from across the Kingdoms and the high ceiling was also painted with a mural of what looked like epic moments from throughout The Great War. Yatsuhashi and Velvet had seen that mural before elsewhere, as had Neo back when she lived with her family in Atlas, but the remaining pair stared at it in amazement; particularly Fox. Seeing was still such a new concept to him, and to know that humans and Faunus could create such masterpieces put him in a state of awe. They were escorted to their table after about five minutes of waiting. Yatsuhashi sat with his back to the wall, on his left was Coco, then Velvet, Neo, then Fox before it completed its circle and ended up back at the tall teammate. The waiter came and gave them all their menus and took their drinks.

"Thank you. And if I may, congratulations on your finding your Mate." The man smiled a genuine smile, his moustache rising with his lips. "How long, if you'd like to share?"

"Only a couple of days" Velvet replied with a glowing smile on her face, a further acceptance of their status as Mates bringing her even further out of her shell.

"Well then, as part of our terms of service I shall inform you that all parties with patrons that have Mated or been engaged within the past 7 days shall receive a 5% discount on their meal. Have a lovely evening." He finished with a quick bow as he wondered to fetch and deliver their drink orders.

"Wow, did you know they offered that here?" Coco asked, a small grin forming.

"None of us have ever needed to know Coco," Yatsuhashi calmly reminded her, "why would we know?"

"...Neo says it doesn't matter anyway - we're here to enjoy ourselves and have a good night out; the discount is a bonus."

"Very true."

The chatter from other people in the restaurant was at a pleasant and tolerable level. Team CFVYN chatted about whatever subjects came to mind, laughing and having fun as their drinks were delivered and their orders taken and their food presented to them. Fox ordered a large chicken burger, Neo and Yatsuhashi had a pasta dish, Coco wanted to try their lasagne and Velvet settled with a chicken Caesar salad. Their merriment continued long after appetites were appeased and bills were paid - surprisingly cheap even before the discount, considering there were five of them. They left and wondered around Vale for a few minutes, but quickly grew bored and instead decided to call an end there and head back to the dorm, where they could do something else. As they wondered towards Beacon, their outfits considerably less formal than when they first set out, the mute gradually eased off the speed so that she and Fox were separated from the main three, something they either don't care about or they were told about. Or the unforeseen third option of 'they didn't notice'.

"Neo, you want to talk?"

' _Yeah._ ' Much to his surprise, she didn't offer him any more than that. Fox knew that she couldn't speak anymore, but that brought a very specific quiet that he had grown accustomed to over the past few months. This was different, it was silence. The kind of silence that he hadn't heard from her since the bathroom back in the shop.

"Ni?" The second wave of silence was longer and louder than the first. It was jarring and, in all honesty, it frightened the student. He wanted to speak again, but his body was telling him to lay back and let her speak of her own accord now, however long that may take; she _was_ the one who wanted to talk to him so she couldn't just not talk. He waited, but that didn't make it any less painful.

' _What'd he mean?_ '

"Um, you're going to have to be a little bit more specific than that hun. What did _who_ mean?"

' _Ozpin!_ ' she snapped, shooting him an angry look for not putting the pieces together. This may not have been the first time she'd given him the look but it was most definitely the first time he'd seen it; he'd prayed that this would be the last time. ' _What did Ozpin mean when he said we needed "the same wish and desire for this to work"?_ ' Fox drew a blank, standing there with his mouth open and no words escaping his lips. ' _Answer me!_ '

"Neo I don't know!" he bounced back in a panic. All three other members heard his words and turned to see what the couple were doing. Fox looked scared and Neo was standing there with an aggressive look on her face. They walked back towards them but actively stayed away from everything to let them settle it themselves.

"We'll step in if things get too out of control, not before. This looks like something they need to sort on their own." The taller and shorter student both nodded at their leader and waited out of the way, Coco with her arm closest to the handle of her weapon resting on her hip for quick deployment time.

' _You've got to know something, you told me earlier not to worry about it then._ '

"But I genuinely don't anything ab-" she cut him off, not in the mood for excuses.

' _Well start guessing!_ ' He recoiled once again, scared.

"Neo, what has brought this on? Why are you being like this?" He got nothing but an angry stare. Sighing with realisation that he wasn't going to coax that out of her unless he provided results, Fox thought hard about it. "'The same desire...' what _exactly_ did you wish for again? Like exactly, word for word."

' _I wish you could see them._ '

"Right, so you wanted me to be able to see so that's what you actively wished for..." his silence gave him a little time to think in his head - even in there was completely quiet. After a minute or two, his eyes widened as the revelation hit him. "Oh, that must be it..."

' _Spill._ ' The ice cream girl advanced on him, the three on the side lines closed the gap as well, but unlike the rest of them Fox did not move. When Neo got close enough she was surprised by a sudden pair of arms wrapping round her in an embrace. She was angry at Fox for not telling her, but something about how this hug felt made it seem like he was... sorry? ' _Fox?_ '

"I've been lying to you." He glanced up at his teammates, who were now well within earshot, as tears began forming in the corner of his copper brown eyes. "I've lied to all of you."

"Fox, what are you talking about? What have you not told us?" Yatsuhashi sounded slightly hurt at the prospect of his teammate not sharing information with the rest of the team.

"I'm sorry Yatsu, I never said this to any of you because it was just a stupid dream." The hug broke and he stepped away from everyone else, back to them all. "The only other people who know are Professors Ozpin and Goodwitch because I mentioned it during the interview. I have always wanted to see." The words fought against his throat as he tried to continue, but all that came was sobs. CVYN walked round to the other side to look at Fox, and they saw him with tears running down his face, new eyes red from the emotions, the shattered moonlight illuminating the paths they took down his face.

' _Fox I am so sorry. I was just reacting and lashing out. Please, continue - but in your own time._ ' To comfort and ground him, Neo took a hold of his hand, her gloves long since removed so the touch was much more intimate. It took him a while, but eventually he calmed down enough to get the rest of his reason out.

"Everyone does it. If you're deaf, part of you always wants to hear; if you're completely blind or colour blind, part of you always wants to see what you're missing. I asked them in the interview if there was anyway an Aura could heal things like broken eyes in the same way they could repair broken bones. They wanted to know why and I responded with 'I don't want to drag my team down because of my lack of sight'. It didn't matter to them, they had faith in me, but also told me that there was no known way for sight to be repaired like that, not for long term, permanent blindness. But I've always had hope. Then the Parchment of Volentes came into play, and part of me _wanted_ to touch it and get my wish, but I shoved that back into the dark depths of my mind. Then I did, and it never occurred to me to think about it actually - I had died and I was trying to readjust. I guess the thought never left, because a few weeks ago the thought came back. But I thought to myself, 'I don't know where Neo is, and that's just selfish', and to this day I still feel that."

' _Fox, that isn't selfish at all! I understand how you feel - I wanted that for me too. But then I realised that when I can talk, Neo doesn't exist anymore. I'd be Orchid again. So don't ever think you were being selfish. I could talk at one point, you have never truly been able to see._ '

"Yeah, but it still feels wrong - you could have had your old life back."

' _I don't want it back if it means I lose you._ ' Fox gasped at the words he just heard echoing through his head. Unsure he heard them right, he blinked. ' _You are the most important thing in the world to me right now, and you always will be. You understood what it meant to have something that most people take for granted missing from your life, and I guess I was drawn to that. Even now that you can see, you still have that experience. But you and I can talk without the use of Sign, and that's the second most amazing thing about this all._ '

"Scared to ask, but what's first?"

' _The fact I found someone so genuinely nice and trustworthy and honest on this hellhole of a planet._ ' He smiled a tear stained smile and hugged her tight.

"Sap."

' _Love you too. But anyway, the wish._ '

"Right of course." He broke the hug to look at the rest of his team, but still kept an arm slung around her shoulder. "We needed the same desire for the wish to work. When Neo made it, the artefact must have sensed that somewhere deep inside was this urge to want sight. So it deemed it a shared desire and it granted it. It's what I can think of at least."

"That does make sense." Velvet grinned at her teammate as she took a step forward. "You are my brother Fox, I've always looked up to you. Nothing you have said has been selfish, it all has been or can be justified. I know I'm not mad at you."

"Thanks Velvet." He ushered her in and gave her a quick hug, surprised to feel two more pairs of arms trap him in the hug.

"I am with Velvet, your reasons were just and we could never be angry at you for wanting that of yourself."

"Thank you guys." After the hugging had stopped, they all made their way back to the dorm. Neo quickly mentioned something to Fox as they approached the room.

' _I meant it by the way, you are the most important thing to me._ '

"I know Neo, and I love you for being so true-"

' _Even ice cream._ ' Fox blinked again, still not sure if that gesture ever made things easier to understand.

' _What?_ '

' _If, Oum forbid, there was a situation where I had to choose between you and a lifetime's supply of ice cream, I'd chose you every time._ '

' _I mean that much to you?_ '

' _Honestly, that's me lowballing it._ ' The kiss she received was slightly unexpected, but it said more than any string of words ever could about how thankful he was for that remark. As they parted, she reiterated her point. ' _Every single time._ ' Fox beamed. He felt the same way too; they may have been forced together through some magical and crazy circumstances, but he would never change anything if it meant that this never happened.

* * *

The second half of the team's evening, and the first chapter of 2018! I know it's a little exposition-y, but sometimes you have to forgo the niceties of weaving in backstories and motivations into the story and just have a full-on exposition dump from time to time.

I've got a few plans for the new year and this story, all I hope you'll enjoy it.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	34. Past Actions -

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Fox lay on his bed the next morning scrolling through his Scroll and discovering all the little features the device had. When you're deprived of sight, the small things most people take full advantage of are all new experiences for him. There were games on here, there were things that could show the Team's Aura levels, there were maps - he'd made a mental note to mark his tree in the park as a favourite on there - loads of stuff. And probably the best part was being able to communicate with people over vast distances without needing to have the words shouted out at him by an automated voice.

 **N - 'I promise we won't be long, we've just got some business to attend to.'**

 **F - 'I know. Still doesn't stop me missing you. x'**

 **N - 'I miss you too. x**

 **'But you know how much Coco wanted to do this, I'm just helping her get things started. Just keep Velvet occupied for the day and we ought to have everything ready by then.'**

 **F - 'Will do. Good luck, and have fun! x**

 **N - 'You too hun. x'**

Despite how simple all that was, it made Fox so happy knowing that he could have a conversation with one person without everyone else in the general area hearing what was being said, especially when the person in question was a Faunus girl with rabbit ears and therefore someone with really good hearing.

"Right," Fox declared, getting Velvet's attention, "they said they may be a while, so Neo said that we should do something to pass the time together. You have anything you want to do today?" She thought about it for a moment before answering.

"Well, there is something new at the Museum I've wanted to see." Fox's expression dropped upon hearing that place again. "Before you start Fox, we'd be going as visitors, there'd be no plots to steal anything and you won't die this time. Just a couple of friends on a day out." His eyes darted around, trying to plan for the inevitable and prepare for the worst... again. "Fox it will be fine, trust me." Try as she might, his face didn't show any signs of improvement. "If it makes you feel any better, do you want us both to take our weapons rather than just one of us?"

"...Yeah... that'd ease my mind... at least, a little bit." She smiled a caring smile, knowing that this may be a risky move - but it was well over two months ago, nearly approaching three months, since that night and a lot of good has happened from it.

"I'll be right by your side, you won't have to worry." Rising to her feet to grab a light jacket, she ushered Fox to do the same. "Come on; if we leave now, we can grab our weapons from the lockers and catch the next flight there." The pair readied themselves and headed out the door. "See you later Yatsu."

"Enjoy yourselves," the tall team member said, not having moved from his meditation position on the edge of his bed, or even opened his eyes. He was perfectly happy getting some well needed mental training in whilst he had the time to do so and the dorm to himself for a while. As the two originally sheltered teammates wondered down the corridors towards their lockers, Fox pulled out his Scroll to message Neo again.

 **F - 'We're heading out for the day, so the dorm is yours and Yatsu's when you get back. x'**

 **N - 'Sweet! x Going anywhere nice?'**

 **F - 'Velvet said she wanted to go see something new at the Museum, so we're heading there...'** Neo didn't take too long to respond...

 **N - 'Good x' ...** but if he was being completely honest, what she said to him wasn't exactly what he had in mind her answer to that news would be.

 **F - 'Good?'**

 **N - 'Well I could tell that place is going to bring back some bad memories of that night, but you'd need to face them at some point. I trust Velv, she's not stupid. Maybe that is the reason she's taking you there, who knows but her? Relax and enjoy it, I'll see you when you get back. x'** Sighing, he replied with a grin on his face.

 **F - 'I will do my best. For you. x'**

 **N - 'I expect a souvenir, that way I know you went in'** She was crafty, but now he didn't have an excuse not to go. Not feeling the need to reply, he put his Scroll back into his pocket and continued walking with Velvet to their lockers.

* * *

"Well, _he_ didn't last very long" the gentleman joked. His practical jeans were a shade darker than he wore last time, the shirt was now a vibrant blue and the waistcoat was a strong earthy brown with a gold chained pocket watch hanging from the left side pocket. Neo smacked his arm in a playful manner, but still hard enough so that he realised that the joke wasn't very funny. Neo used very basic Sign to hammer home the fact she and Coco were not a couple.

" _Look. Her Shoulder. Mark. Mine. Empty._ " The man did as he was instructed, because who would honestly want to get on the bad side of a woman like this, and looked at both girls' shoulders. He noticed the Mate Mark on Coco's but that Neo's was empty.

"I'm sorry Neo, I was only pulling your leg. I take it you're her friend then?" Coco lowered her sunglasses and stepped forward.

"Yup, friend and potential future teammate, providing everything goes through alright."

"'Teammate'? So are you deciding to settle down then Neo?" The ice cream girl blushed slightly, unintentionally twirling the end of the brown side of her hair at the accidental double meaning in that question. Yeah, she was hopefully going to be staying at Beacon. But also she hoped she could spend her life with Fox. "But enough on that; what'll it be today? Another dress? Or something different?"

"We're doing something for my girlfriend, something small as I'm being taught how to do this by this amazing little woman. I take it she came here earlier this week?"

"Indeed she did, with her boyfriend to get some things for a dress."

"Oh right. Did you help her then?"

"No madam, she knew what she wanted on her own."

"Well I want to thank you anyway; the dress was superb and it fit me perfectly."

"It was for you? I bet you looked amazing in it; Neo doesn't disappoint, let me tell you that. So what was the plan for your girlfriend?"

"Like I said, we're starting simple so I guess something like..." she turned her attention to Neo "what'd you think, a cushion? That be a good starting point?" The small woman nodded. "A cushion."

"Very well. You have a look through over there and see what colours and fabrics you want for the decorations, I'll go with Neo to get the perfect material for the cushion itself. Won't be a mo'." Coco wondered off in the direction he pointed whilst he and Neo took their leave in the other direction. "A cushion? Is that all?"

" _Simple. Easy. Quick._ "

"I suppose so. I would have thought you'd throw her in at the deep end, give her a big challenge right from the get go." Neo shook her head.

" _Special. Don't mess up._ "

"You know best Neo." A triumphant grin came across her face and she continued on with a proud nod of the head.

* * *

The Vale History Museum. Two confirmed deaths on the premises: Mr. Fox Alistair, Ms. Neopolitan 'Neo'. And now, one of those two were about to re-enter its walls. Fox looked at the imposing structure from the bottom of its front steps.

"Y'know Velvet, it even kind of _looks_ like a tomb from here."

"Fox, would you stop that. This is not your tomb, and nothing bad is going to happen." The Faunus grew a little weary of hearing Fox mentioning how the place was effectively his tomb on the journey over. "Now come on."

They climbed the first lot of stairs in no time and were in through the front door. Any worries Fox had previously disappeared through that gateway as he observed the vast array of historical items on display, and this was just the entrance lobby.

"Hey Velvet?"

"Yeah Fox?"

"Can I take back what I said first time we came here? I think I'd like a guided tour." The Rabbit girl giggled at his comment as he remained staring all around him and gawping at the sights.

"It'd be my pleasure." She grabbed his arm. "Come on, there's plenty of rooms to look at besides the main hall." They paid to continue on, then made their way through to the newly rebuilt Faunus exhibit on the ground floor, Scrolls at the ready to take photos where they pleased. It was completely fixed because Glynda had come here shortly after arriving back from her little break, but she did so at the cost of Team CFVY's afternoon's for the week afterwards - two hours of Goodwitch Detentions for five days is more than enough for most sane people to realise that they shouldn't be doing that sort of thing. Her attention was immediately drawn to the history of the Rabbit Faunus, naturally, as she learned more about her own heritage.

From the Faunus room, they went upstairs and looked through the Mythological Wing. Velvet recounted stories around all of the tales she was told when she was a kid; about how there were Four Girls who went to see a Wizard, who used his powers to turn them into the Fabled Four Maidens, about how there were Two Brothers who fought for control but joined forces when they created their last item together - humans, about relics and so on. Fox was fascinated throughout all this time. He'd heard these stories before, and he'd pictured how they'd looked in his head, but never had he seen other people's physical interpretations of the events.

Past the Myths came the Grimm. The room was much darker than every other one - all of the bright lights of the previous rooms were replaced with eerie red ones, the windows were all obscured and the room itself just felt a little bit colder. For Velvet, the cold was the only thing that meant anything to her, taking her night vision into consideration. The tour guide act she was putting on disappeared as she realised the room she was entering.

"Actually Fox, can we come back to this room? There's a-" her sentence was cut short by a man pushing past the two of them, his hands never moving from the lapels on the oversized coat he wore. As more people continued heading their way they had no choice but to follow the surge into the room. "Oh no, and I wanted to come here at the end..."

"Why, what's so special about here that warrants it?"

"It's a surprise" she teased. "I wanted everyone to come and see it too, but I guess I'll just need to take photos instead."

"Playing the pronoun game Velvet; what did you want us to see?"

"Just hold your horses!" She realised what she said and let out a little chuckle, something that made Fox question why a few words like that made her laugh. She showed them round the room in a rather odd manner, jumping from the stories of the Grimm to models of the smaller Grimm, then back to stories, all in an effort to avoid a certain point very strategically until the last possible moment. When they couldn't avoid it any longer, Velvet led her friend up to the newest model in the room. "I'd been looking too see when it had arrived and try to get at least a couple of us down here to see it in person."

"Got to say, a lot uglier than I imagined it being."

"Well, you heard what it sounded like, did you honestly expect it to look prettier than it sounded?"

"I suppose... so is this where you wanted to take some photos." The raising of the Scroll was all the indication he needed to strike a silly pose.

* * *

Whilst they wondering through the corridors to get closer to their dorm back at Beacon, Coco's Scroll buzzed in her pocket. She reached to grab it and pulled it out to see what it was.

"Oh, it's Velvet."

' ** _5 files attached. Click_** ** _here_** ** _to view'_** The team leader did, and her face broke into a grin. Neo scooted over to the seat next to her to view what she was looking at. The first image was of Fox pointing and "screaming" at a life-sized Nuckelavee model in the Vale Museum. The next was of Velvet pulling her rabbit ears down to her head like she was shielding herself from its scream and the third was Fox taking a photo of both of them with the nightmare Grimm behind them. The fourth and fifth photos were of the next written on the plaque at the base of the Grimm model. The only thing that mattered to them was what was focussed on in the final photo as opposed to the entirety of the plaque on the fourth one.

'...first accurate and reliable documented description of the Grimm, along with the first official death of one, was made by second year students from Beacon Academy in Vale. The five piece team worked together to defeat the Anomaly Grimm, so called due to there only ever being one recorded, and they did so with vigour an...'

" _Five piece team..._ "

"Well Neo, Ozpin's _got_ to let you stay now - its Museum official." The woman face lit up with a smile, so much so that there were even tears forming in her eyes. "Hey, no tears alright? They stain the material, don't they?" The tears subsided when Neo rolled her eyes with a grin, shaking her head at the _fashionista's_ lack of knowledge on materials.

" _You still have a lot to learn Coco. Now, let's get it started._ "

* * *

After their photos with the Nuckelavee, they made their way up the stairs again to the Great War Wing - the section Fox remembered first mentioning to his team that they weren't alone in the Museum that fateful night. He wondered away from Velvet to a stop in the room, shutting his eyes and activating his semblance. The sensation that once seemed like second nature to him now started to feel almost alien, but at the same time it still felt very much like home. The corners of his mouth were pulled upwards into a ghost of a smile as Velvet found him and approached.

"Everything okay over here Fox?" His eyes eased open as he looked at his teammate.

"This was it Velvet. The place I first sensed that girl." He looked at the spot where he stood, that small area that was no different to the area next to it, yet completely different in terms of significance to him. "It's the spot my life changed." She gave him a quick hug to remind him that it was all for the best in the end; even if it didn't start that way.

They explored the rest of the Great War Wing with Velvet still explaining a lot of what she knew to Fox; the roles were reversed on a couple of occasions, one being when he told her a story of how his distant relation fought in a particular battle of the War that wasn't well documented because of the sudden arrival of Grimm. Armies were depleted as is, then to have a third party join in - and that third party being wave upon wave of Creatures of Grimm - meant that casualties consisted of every man and Faunus that fought, and most of them were instantly fatal or fatal at a later stage. Both armies were lucky that some of their forces made it back so to keep the assault from being a complete suicide mission and instead downgrade it to full blown massacre - something that honestly didn't sound that much better. Both sides also agreed to let the story be told by those who survived rather than the masses knowing through one side's propaganda news; it was one of the very few things that the Kingdoms agreed on during the War. The other information he told Velvet was that the spot he was stood in now was where he knocked his assailant out - at least he thought he did, he wasn't around to see she'd recovered enough to stumble her way to freedom - a fact that didn't seem to impress her.

Velvet made a much better effort to avoid one room altogether than she did with the Grimm exhibition as they went upstairs one last time and came to the Kingdom Wings. They spent a fair bit of time in here, as they realised that unfortunately they did have school to return to sooner than they would have wanted and in their final semesters as second years they would have a test on the Four Kingdoms, so they used this opportunity to gather research on them but especially Vacuo and Atlas, as neither of the two present hailed from either of those Kingdoms. Once they were done there, Velvet said how she believed them to be done. Fox disagreed.

"I know you've been avoiding it," he told her. "It's not as easy as it may have been in the past for you to get me to miss the fact that there was an entire _section_ of the Museum we missed out of the floor below." Velvet suddenly went a little sheepish, rubbing her palms together nervously and focussing on anything except Fox. "Velv, I understand. I know you probably wanted me to go there eventually, but maybe not today - right? Well I say, I'm here now, let's do it." He took off towards the exhibition they'd passed on the floor below, the Faunus following.

The room wasn't any different from the others, with the exception of the Grimm displays. The displays were no different in terms of design or general layout - name and plaque at the front, item behind it. In all fairness, the Historical Wing was fairly uninteresting in comparison to everywhere else; at least they had some knowledge that they theoretically could use in the future if they needed to. Here, nothing of the sort. The only interesting thing about this room was the fact that two people had "died" in here, but not for long. The boy stood by the spot on the floor he remembered landing on, the last place he remembered being. The memory of his scream still resonated somewhere in the back of his mind, as did the fact that the pain was just as unbearable as he dreamt it being. The broken display meant for the Parchment of Volentes had since been removed, though nothing else had replaced it as of yet. There was nothing but memories that linked them to that day anymore.

"See? I'm fine Velvet, and there's nothing here to worry about."

"Sorry..." he muttered, barely audible over the chatter of the other people in the Museum. "I just assumed it was something that would make you want to avoid this place like the business end of a King Taijitu." Fox's brow furrowed.

"Velvet, both ends of a King Taijitu are the busine- oh, I see what you did there." The Faunus giggled at him, bumping into him with her hips.

"Come on, you dumb Fox. _Now_ we're done."

"Sure." A thought occurred to him before he set off; he took a photo of the floor and sent it to his girlfriend.

 **F - '** ** _1 file attached. Click_** ** _here_** ** _to view_**

 **'The first place we met. You died right here. x'**

 **N - 'Charming ;)'**

They made a quick stop to the Gift Shop on the way out, buying something for both their respective partners and girlfriends; Fox got a little snow globe for Neo and a small toy sword for Yatsuhashi - he assured Velvet the big guy could take a joke - whilst Velvet got a key chain with a fluffy, almost Chibi looking, Nuckelavee on it. But once they'd gone down the steps outside and across the street they were stopped by someone, a man in a large coat and a wide brimmed hat - the same one from earlier.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"You could have, yes" the smooth voice replied. Velvet's ears twitched ever so slightly, trying to find the reason why it sounded so familiar and where she may have heard it before. "You could have saved me so much trouble had you co-operated."

"I have no idea what you're on about. Please, let us pass."

"I'd rather not. See, you took something that was mine, and I have friends now who would agree with that. We want the Parchment of Volentes back."

"Well tough," Fox bit back, defending his more timid friend, "if you wanted it for the wish, it's been granted." The man growled in frustration.

"Oh dear. That may actually prove worse for you than what I'd originally planned; it means I don't need to be nice." He removed his hat, revealing his face. Velvet gasped as she looked at a familiar face again, one she hoped they'd never have to see again. "There's no reason for me to keep you alive anymore," Daerk DeVanta sneered.

* * *

Yup, he's back.

I've got next chapter up and running, and it is already looking to be a big one. Honestly, I think at the rate I'm going it will be my biggest chapter to date by a significant margin. Expect the chapter same sort of time next week.

Speaking of big, I can't believe I've done it. This story has reached over 100,000 words, and it is unreal! 100k for a couple that have been near nonexistent in fanfiction up until this point, and the story's still going.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	35. - Create Current Problems

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Yatsuhashi's eyes snapped open as he took a quick and heavy intake of air. Coco and Neo had been going about their business around him and he was perfectly fine with that, so long as they understood that if they disturbed him they'd be hung upside down by him until such a time as they apologise or they pass out, whichever comes first. Neo was very happy taking that threat as (hopefully) just a joke and didn't want to disturb what he was doing anyway; she had someone to teach. But the boy's sudden noise and movement startled the sewing teacher and her student.

"Something feels wrong." Neo hadn't been around Yatsuhashi long enough to know what to do when something like this happens, but Coco had. And Coco knew that if Yatsuhashi interrupts his meditation for anything like this, then you listen to whatever he says.

"What's the matter Ya..." her thoughts strayed as she felt a surge of emotions flowing through her that weren't her own. Her Mark was glowing, so she knew that meant it was Velvet.

 _Fear. Terror. Uncertainty._

"Fox and Velvet may be in trouble," he answered, completely ignoring the fact that his leader hadn't actually finished the question. The statement now caught and kept Neo's attention.

"So I've felt; Velvet's terrified! Why she so scared, where's Fox in all this?" She got out her Scroll and went straight to Maps. "I swear if he's left her alone..." The corners of her mouth ghosted upwards to a smile if only for a brief moment when she saw that the Faunus had instinctively turned her Scroll to 'Distress Beacon' so that her location was constantly being refreshed every second. "She's by the Museum..." she clicked a few buttons and got Fox's Scroll to register its location - effectively in the same place as Velvet's "...and so is he. Whatever's there is scaring her a lot even if Fox is there." No sooner had she finished speaking, Velvet's Scroll started moving fast. "They're running, we have to go!" She grabbed her beret and sunglasses - because she never went anywhere without them - and headed straight for the landing pads. Yatsuhashi threw on a t-shirt and some slightly more sensible trousers and Neo grabbed her parasol from the corner of the room, because she didn't feel like trusting it to be kept safe in a locker, then the pair of them were out following the fashionista.

Panting slightly from running down the stairs, Coco's Scroll began to ring. She picked up as soon as she saw who was calling.

"Velvet?"

* * *

Daerk DeVanta stood opposite the two students. His clean shaven and spotless skin from before was now covered in small scratches and stubble. The suit he wore underneath the large blue over coat was much baggier than the one Velvet recalled him wearing in the hospital, also it was a much more indigo colour - leaning ever so slightly towards plum in certain lights - with an open collared deep green shirt.

"If I don't need you alive, then I can have some fun before I kill you" he grinned. Velvet stealthily pressed a button on her Scroll from within her bag.

"What do you even want from us?" the boy demanded, standing between this madman and his friend but feeling like he'd much rather be hiding behind someone else like Yatsu or Coco.

"There's no 'us' boy, just _you._ You and that other girl." The sudden appearance of a large serrated knife from Daerk's coat pocket sent shivers down their spines as they took a step back. "You've got the Parchment in you, I need it, and I'm going to kill you both so that I can get it!" The students took another step back in fear as he took an intimidating step forward, the once smooth-spoken man now teetering on crazy. "As since you're here little bunny, you can die too."

"What do sense Fox?" the Faunus whispered.

"At first glance, he's either got no Aura or he is masking it. He's clearly crazy to challenge two armed Huntsmen-in-Training, so I don't want to chance anything."

"Run?" she hushed.

"Run!" he shouted, forcing as much Aura as he dared through his body to his feet as he and Velvet shot themselves back and up, creating as large a gap as they possibly could manage. Fox landed first with a roll to spread the force of the impact up, then started running. Velvet spun herself round in the air and landed not soon after, but she instead took off with a second jump, still away from the man who'd threatened their very lives. Once she and Fox felt a little safer, she called Coco at the first opportunity she got when they were in a crowd. CFVYN's team leader was the first to speak.

"Velvet?"

"The man from the hospital is back. He wants to kill Fox to get the Parchment, and now he's after me too. We need your help, hurry! Please!" She didn't feel she needed to say anymore, so she hung up.

* * *

"Okay she really _is_ in trouble" Coco informed her teammates as they got close to her outside the main building.

" _What's happened? Are they alright?_ " Neo was understandably scared for not only her close friend and teammate's safety, but her boyfriend's too.

"Apparently Daerk DeVanta has made a sudden reappearance and is threatening to kill both Fox and Velvet now." The anger that came to the tall boy's face frightened Coco - even when DeVanta wanted their bodies back in the hospital Yatsuhashi was calmer than this. What he was experiencing now was clearly unbridled rage. Both of Neo's hands went around and grabbed the boy's in an effort to ease the rage as Coco spoke. "Easy Yatsu, easy. We'll get there, don't worry. Call your weapon in, we'll catch the next flight into Vale and get there as soon as we possibly can."

"Oka,y" he managed. Within the minute two metal lockers landed right by them, revealing a Greatsword and a handbag. They turned to leave when they saw two airships departing from their bays.

"Shit!"

"And the next one isn't for another 10 minutes, even then we don't know where that'd take us." The grip on his sword was so tight that Neo was certain she was hearing the metal creaking from the pressure.

"We can't exactly run there either. There's no other way of getting there any faster, waiting or running are the only options." The words brought a memory screaming back to Neo's mind. She looked at the lockers, then at her team and grinned. "Neo?"

" _Well... the only **safe** options._ "

* * *

Even with Aura reserves and an adrenaline high from potentially being chased, running was still a tiresome activity. The pair did their best to keep to the main streets, so that they'd have the best chance to blend into the crowd and escape unharmed. But it was kind of hard to do that when there wasn't really a crowd in the first place, just a few scattered bunches of people. Struggling to find their breath, Daerk slowly walked into their field of view once again. They'd been running for a good 5 minutes and he didn't even look like he broken into anything more than a brisk walk.

"Tsk, tsk, little ones. Running isn't going to do you any good." He spun his knife in his hands, mocking them. "It's not going to make this fun. I thought you were fighters. Why won't you fight?"

"Because... that's what you... want," the tan skinned boy panted.

"Maybe," came the reply, followed by a sadistic laugh. "But I'm not here to fight, I have friends for that." On cue, Fox and Velvet were both struck square in their backs with kicks as they were shot closer to the mad scientist... on second thoughts, everything seems to make a little more sense about him now. Fox glanced up at his surprise attackers and saw three main people there; one girl with skin darker than his and mint green hair, a boy dressed in grey with the hair to match and a woman wearing heels, a red dress and with eyes that looked like they were on fire strutting to join them and rounding off the trio. Behind they were a small group of people in white outfits and Grimm masks on, clearly members of The White Fang, something that Velvet noticed before anything else that made her lips dry and her ears fall back on her head in terror.

"It's nice to see you again little rabbit," Cinder mocked. "I never got the chance to properly hurt you before, but make no mistakes; I intend to correct that this time." She looked at the other student on the floor. "And you must be Fox. Watching you die is going to be so sweet, especially if I get to kill you in front of your little girlfriend." Fox's eyes narrowed in realisation as he felt the Aura's of the three. He thought he recognised them, this were Neo's "team" before she died, the ones from the Museum.

"Now now Cinder," Daerk reminded as he circled the two to join the criminals like a predator with its prey, "Foxy boy here is mine, as is that Neo girl." A smirk grew on the tattooed woman's face.

"Why of course, I wouldn't dare deny you that privilege."

"Leave them alone!" a booming voice called from above them. Necks looked up as three figures landed next to the two on the floor, with two metal lockers landing not too far away from them. Yatsuhashi turned and glared at the man beside them, anger building once again but his voice remained worryingly level. "I thought I made myself clear when I told you to never lay a finger on him again." Not threatened by his presence, Daerk simply chuckled.

"Oh, but I haven't! I haven't touched him, and I won't..." his grin turned evil as he raised the knife closer to his own head "...that's what the knife is for!" Team CFVYN now stood in a slight V formation with Fox at the head, their weapons at the ready to take on the ones opposing them.

"Neo, what a surprise!" Mercury said ironically. "I could lie and say that I never thought you would turn traitor on us, but we all know this was never your thing anyway, was it?" The colour of her eyes swapped sides so that her eyes and hair colour lined up perfectly. "What's wrong? Mad at me for telling the truth?" A sadistic smile grew on his face. "I know I can't kill you, but that doesn't mean I can't make you suffer first!"

The few citizens of Vale who were around had long since fled the scene, and they were in their right minds to do so. Not one of the five in the centre moved, they were instead waiting their opposition to strike first; even Yatsuhashi with his boiling rage.

"What are you waiting for?" Cinder asked, turning her head behind her. "Get them." One member of The White Fang group started charging, then a second, then the rest. Neo kept her eyes on this new man they called Daerk, but he just remained there smiling, even backing away a little. He wasn't going to be a problem at the moment, so she instead focussed on the three members heading straight for her - of course there would be, Cinder and the rest knew what she was capable of and so obviously they'd try and priorities keeping her occupied for as long as possible. That was always the plan; keep the ones they knew about occupied whilst they did their best to figure out the rest. ' _But come on guys!_ ' she thought to herself, ' _Five would have at least been interesting, but three?_ '

A deer Faunus was the first to get close to any of them, but they were almost literally swatted aside into a nearby brick wall by the towering student as he started advancing towards Daerk, his rage no longer being contained now there was a fight on hand. Lowering his stance and dragging the tip of the blade along the concrete, Yatsuhashi started running at the mad scientist.

"Yatsu wait!" Fox called, but was stopped from going to help when he had to prevent a flying kick from a Badger Faunus from striking him in the head. As the giant approached, he brought his second hand to the handle, then within five paces took a huge swing at the man. He didn't react at all; no blinking, no flinching, he just stood there - mostly because he knew that Cinder was going to step in between him and his aggressor and stop the attack, but not without sending a very hefty shockwave of energy out from the point of connection that knocked a couple of the physically weaker White Fang members off their feet. She held the Greatsword where it was with a floating layer of infused dust, though it was clearly a bit of a struggle for her. Still seething, Yatsuhashi put more into it, leaning his body towards the tattooed woman and forcing her to bring her other hand up to try and combat the strain. But Yatsuhashi was not only 1ft taller than her, but physically he was considerably stronger than her and was also pretty angry, it was showing that Cinder was losing ground fast. The tank was stopped when a foot crashed into his stomach and a shot sent him flying back, something he managed to recover from and landed on his feet, digging his sword into the ground to stop him skidding any further.

"You know something big guy," Mercury taunted, "I'm not too happy with the result of the last fight we had, I've been meaning to rectify it." Cinder stood and glared at the back of Mercury's head, annoyed that it took him so long to actually step in when she was clearly fighting a losing battle.

"You are not my concern, step out of the way!" He pulled the Greatsword out of the floor and physically readied it for another charge, though going off how last time started, mentally prepared himself to ne on the defensive.

"I'm your concern now." The silver grey haired boy started running at the dark skinned student - just as the tank had thought he would - ready for round two.

Whilst that all happened Coco made her way forward towards a couple of attackers - one Hound Faunus, one Cat Faunus - and waited for one to strike first. To her surprise, they attacked with a decent level of coordination as the Cat jumped high whilst the other stayed low, trying to get her off balance to open her up to more attacks from them. She blocked their strikes with either her arms, legs or her handbag, whichever was easier, for a little bit before they started gaining ground on her. The Hound threw a harsh right hook they she barely managed to bring her left arm up to stop it hitting her head, then as he pivoted round to strike her with an elbow, which she also blocked, the Cat Faunus went for a lunge attack from behind to get her to ground. Midway through their leap, Velvet intercepted and flew shoulder first into the feline, knocking her away from her girlfriend. Naturally the Cat landed on her feet, still skidding slightly due to the unforeseen change in momentum during the jump, and came to a stop as Velvet stood up from the roll she'd just finished to lessen the impact made when she herself landed.

"Why are you helping the humans?" the taller of the two Faunus girls hissed at the mage, "you should be on _our_ side, righting the wrongs they did to us for years!"

"What you're doing is only tarnishing our image further," the student replied, preparing herself for a fight. "Violence will only result in more violence."

"How else are we meant to get our message across?" Clearly this was something that had been drilled into their minds from induction and she was just spouting it out like a recital. "If humans cannot accept that just because we are different from them doesn't mean we all need to be ridiculed and treated as lesser or thrown to one side to live in Menagerie away from everyone else, then we will need to take the land they hold so dear by force. They see us as animals, so we don the faces of them."

"Agreed, we're not treated as equals a lot of the time; but fighting won't make them see reason! If we work with them to-"

"You've clearly been spending too much time in their company." Dropping her stance slightly, her thin tail swayed side to side a couple of times as she stretched her finger, letting her feline claws come out. "I guess there's no point in trying to get you to see the truth, so I'll just flay your skin instead." Rabbit ears fell flat on her head at the vicious threat, but Velvet knew that running wouldn't be an option. She'd need to be on the defensive a lot, but she felt confident in her abilities to stop this woman.

Fox's final strike knocked the Badger out cold. The next two that attacked him, a Dog and another Badger, were clearly newer recruits with not as much combat experience as the rest of them. They blindly ran at him screaming, but as the scarred boy turned to "run away", they realised all too late that the first step he took was merely there to steady his body as he brought his other leg round to catch one with a spinning back kick to the gut that thrust one into the other. From there, Fox jumped in using his Aura to gain a decent amount of height on them. As the White Fang pair looked up, the boy's palm connected with the upper chest of the one at the front and using a little bit of his Aura to seal the deal he forced them back and down, driving the pair into the ground, knocking up dust and concrete everywhere but ultimately leaving them out of commission. Much easier than that first Badger. He straightened his posture and stared at the ringleader for this whole operation - she'd clearly provided the "muscle power" and the "strategy" for this battle, if that's what you want to call it - and the slimy man who paid for it all. A small hum sounded all around Fox as he addressed them.

"How will killing me help you?"

"In so many more ways than you could imagine. It'll help me unwind from a stressful day; keep my killings skills up to par; it gets your sorry ass out of my way; but above all else it gets me one step closer to coming into possession of the Parchment of Volentes and I finally get my wish!" The man started pacing up and down as he broke into a monologue. "My family was one of the first to ever lay eyes upon the Parchment back when it was first rediscovered. Back then, all they ever believed it to be was an ancient scripture of a religion long forgotten in a language not documented in countless generations. Until my ancestor made contact with it. It infused with him, meshed and melded with his Aura and it spoke to him. 'You are the first to ever be deemed worthy of the gift I possess. You may ask nearly any wish you like and it shall happen; as you are trustworthy and wise I will not worry about you making an irresponsible wish.'

"He informed the party and went off to make a decision on his wish, but he was stabbed through the heart with a vicious. It looked kind of like this. The blade tore the Parchment even when it was attached to his very soul, breaking the information dump at the start and rendering my ancestor on Death's door with a magical item that no longer works properly. His attacker ordered that he grant her the wish she so desired. He refused and according to those there at the time he died, his final words were as follows: 'Let it be written in ink and my own blood that this item is cursed. The one who touches it will die before their wish can ever be granted. Not I! I wish that the Clan of DeVanta - my family and lineage - shall chase after this Parchment until the end of days until one of us is granted the wish our family so deserves.'" Unseen by the once-blind boy, Emerald's semblance was working wonders on Fox as she hid her physical body from Fox's gaze and masked her Aura from him too. The mint haired girl was slowly making her way around Fox to catch him off guard from behind.

"So that's where you got your melodramatic and eccentric tendencies come from..."

"His words have been passed from his son to myself! They have been passed down and all of us knew his last words, knowing what to do and what to say _when_ we got hold of it, because I will."

"I can tell you now, killing me will just piss off three extremely talented and deadly Huntresses and Huntsmen-in-Training and an ice cream themed woman who took all three of them down by herself casually, and they'd be after you with every intention of sending your sorry ass six feet under." Rather than the man speaking this time, the red clad woman spoke instead.

"That is why I brought so many of my friends along. You will all be dead within the hour and then that's one of Ozpin's prize teams down the drain. Morale in the school would plummet as his star second years students were killed, people would stop attending, Beacon would be the laughing stock of Remnant. And for what? A piece of paper." As a retort came to his lips, a pair of arms grabbed him under the arms and locked him in a Full Nelson. Emerald managed to sneak her way around behind Fox and was keeping him steady. "Now I have the rest of your friends to deal with, starting with your little Neo. After everything she'd done to us, she deserves to have her heart ripped out in front of her. What better way than to violently and slowly kill person she's taken a fancy to right in front of her eyes?" Cinder took off in the direction of Neo who was easily dancing around her foes. The man in the suit eased forward, grin growing all the more.

"Your death is going to be painful, especially since you ran from me." And he started slowly cutting the boys skin, causing him to thrash in pain as new scars were added to his skin.

The Cat Faunus very nearly matched her Rabbit brethren in terms of speed and agility - if the woman hadn't been trained at all before, then with training she could easily surpass Velvet - but she was most certainly the stronger and more aggressive of the two. Every attempt she made to attack the student, the girl would bound away from her reach, but she would pounce back at her and thus the cycle would continue. But the Rabbit had run earlier whereas she had not, so she slowly gained the upper hand, edging ever closer. Velvet knew this and her futile attempts at doing something different with her defence to throw her attacker turned quickly into ever-growing mistakes that were getting easier to capitalise on. So, she switched strategies. She channelled a bit of her Aura through her feet to jump away a little further than she had been before, then propelled herself forwards straight after in a counterattack that the Cat had mere nanoseconds to react to, all of which passed by too fast as a knee collided with her ribs. Once that attack had landed, Velvet took a swing with the opposite arm to the knee, which connected with the side of the feline's head, and then finished all that with a backflip that she made sure her feet made nice firm contact with her jawline; they did, sending the woman flying back towards where Neo was fighting. The Cat Faunus didn't stay there long, just as Velvet didn't waste any time summoning a weapon to her aid.

With her Grimm mask now shattered, the Cat Faunus' green eyes turned to slits as she adjusted her position so that she was now crouched down and poised to strike. From what she could make out the Rabbit was very hands on with combat, much like she was, so she needed to gain the early advantage. Her thoughts were broken and her eyes turned back to their usual round irises as the ground in front of her started lighting up with bullets being peppered everywhere. She jumped out of the way as they made their way to where she was previously standing, her chestnut brown hair flowing a little more freely behind her as she did. Velvet stood there with a hard light construct of StormFlower in her hands, firing shots in rapid succession at her opponent to keep her at a good distance. Velvet thought that StormFlower would be the best choice as it could provide probably the fastest rate of fire out of all the weapons she had in her arsenal at present, second only to her girlfriend's probably. Only thing is she didn't want to use the hard light Gatling gun at all; if they saw how it worked and pieced together the fact this was identical to the one the fashionista was sporting, then they could plan how to counter it before Coco herself uses the real deal which wouldn't be good for any of them at all.

Coco managed to hold her own against the Hound Faunus. She noted how he was good in battle, but ultimately whatever he and the Cat that Velvet was fighting had together - maybe they were each other's partners - was much better than the sum of the two parts, not to say they were bad but they weren't nearly as challenging alone, at least to the gunner. She kept noticing how lots of his moves would start out strong but then there felt like there was a gap where something should have been but wasn't; she deduced that was probably where the attack from his ally would come in. The fashionista forcibly snapped herself out of that mindset; she wasn't leading these two White Fang members, she was fighting them. Giving them ideas on how to improve would only make their fight harder. Eventually, she grew tired of defending against half-attacks, so she baited the man into going for a high hitting strike. He non-verbally complied, hopping into a flying kick aimed straight at her head. Whilst not exactly what she was expecting, Coco took the chance he'd presented and stepped off to one side at the last second, wrapping her hands around his outstretched leg and in a quick and solid movement used his own momentum to bring him down with a crash into the ground. To ensure he stayed there, the handbag/Gatling gun on her belt was removed and came down on the back of his head, leaving him unconscious with a nice concussion and a potential broken nose to come around to. From there, she glanced at her girlfriend who was fighting in close quarters with the Cat Faunus, claws swiping and shots being fired with every punch - she was using Yang's weapons now. Doing what she could to get there as fast as humanly possible, CFVYN's leader made her way to fight by Velvet's side.

Neo toyed with the White Fang members a bit. They were no match for her at all, even less so than Yang was back on the train and _she_ was a Huntress-in-Training. Their attacks were messy and uncoordinated, and fairly often she didn't even need to touch them to get them bumping into one another. She only did that for so long to appease her slightly sadistic side. Eventually she played serious, hitting them hard one after another in fairly quick succession to knock them out. Her skills were rewarded with a slow and sarcastic clap from behind her.

"It seems you've improved Neo," Cinder commented, "I'm impressed. You actually _can_ apply yourself when you care. If the situation weren't the one it was, I'd potentially offer you a place beside me again; but we both know what your answer would be to that anyway." Tattoos started glowing a glorious orange light as a Cinder's Glass Bow and arrows formed in her hands, all pointing at the person she once worked with. "That cannot be helped I'm afraid; you are just a lost cause now, and not only that but you won't be alive anyway to fight your way out of it." The red clad woman fired the two arrows she had drawn simultaneously, both of them flying straight at the smaller woman. Her parasol opened and acted like a shield for her, the two projectiles bouncing off its surface like metal. The material Neo used to create that was so unbelievably rare that she never mentioned to anyone where she got it from - not that she could anyway. As a cosmetic item, the parasol weighed ever so slightly more than a conventional one due to the material - though not by much - and yet as a weapon it could, even with such a thin layer of the material, block multiple high calibre rounds with nothing more than an annoying scratch on it.

The slight downside was that there was no way to see through it. Cinder obviously wanted her to block like that as the second the para-shield was up, she rocketed forward, splitting the bow into two individual sword blades. Retracting it back so that it was much more offense ready, Neo's eyes flashed white as her former boss took a swing at her. Knowing she didn't have time to react physically, she let the impact come as she teleported away leaving the shattered remains of what once was her body. Having teleported straight up, Neo was flying down to the ground fast and aimed directly at her enemy. Swords and parasol crashed into one another causing sparks to fly from between the two women's weapons.

"What's the matter Neo? It looked like you were doing alright earlier, but you're actually getting rusty."

' _Bitch..._ ' the ice cream girl pushed the twin swords away and started attacking in a combination of her parasol and her feet; throwing first a left kick, then pivoting around for a backhand swipe of her weapon followed by a quick rising strike. Using the momentum from that strike she tried a jumping kick to Cinder's gut, but that was easily blocked, so she continued her assault with just the weapon in hand. Cinder was not bad in combat, she had far more experience and knowledge than she often led people to believe, but against Neo she knew she would not win with skill or strength as Neo bested her in both of these categories - the latter of which both surprised and infuriated the tattooed woman when she first discovered. But Cinder was by far the most cunning and tactical out of them, out of everyone save Salem really.

Salem could play the long game really well, taking actions that may seem insignificant at the time but, much like a butterfly's wings to a hurricane, prove disastrous to their foes later down the line. Cinder was great at the here and now, the more short-term strategies which is why Salem almost always went to her if something needed to be done quickly and done right. Having worked 'with' Neo for a while she was aware of her skills and way of fighting; her weapon was just a parasol, but it could block most projectiles with ease and contained a hidden blade in the handle end, something she only got out when she was going in for the kill. She had no range whatsoever, and that is where Cinder needed to be.

The dark haired woman dissolved the weapon in her dominant hand and kept attacking with the one in her left. Whilst not the most powerful they could be, the swings still made an impact. Without warning, Cinder summoned a flame in her stronger hand and thrust it towards Neo immediately after their two weapons clashed. Unprepared, the petite woman threw herself backwards to avoid the heat, smacking away the stray flickers of flames on her outfit that lingered. Besides a slight darkening, no lasting damage was done. The blast of fire took a lot out of Cinder, she still only possessed part of the Fall Maiden's powers and as such she couldn't do all the things a Maiden could to the same degree and without immense strain on her body, so she limited the times she used it. But even so, Neo was now at a distance, one that wouldn't be in her comfort zone.

Cinder saw this and took the chance presented. She switched her sword into a bow once again and started firing arrows at her. Not intending to leave herself a sitting duck again, the ice cream girl's only option was to flee from them. As the first arrow stuck into the ground behind her, two more were already hurtling towards her. The parasol smacked the one arrow that came too close away, but all it did was shatter into glassy shards that made their way back to the woman with the bow. Shot after shot came and Neo danced around them all, swatting the ones that got too close away. She grew tired of playing defence and her mind focussed on shifting the battle in her favour again. She landed and lowered her body ready to advance, but the ground below them exploded as two shots from Mercury's boots landed right near their feet; a pure coincidence but it meant that neither of them had the upper hand on their opponent until one took the chance. Landing first, the ice cream girl rushed in, bringing her back into melee range and safely into her comfort zone. Without due time to properly ready herself, Cinder defended with the bow, blocking a few attacks with it before Neo went for a strike with a much larger wind up than others, giving her enough time to split it up into twin swords. So much for her plan of keeping Neo away.

Yatsuhashi's current fight with Mercury had a lot more energy and emotion behind it than their first fight at the Museum. Back then, one's aim was just to defeat the other to continue with their mission whilst the other was tasked to stop them, all whilst surrounded by artefacts that at least one of them tried their best to keep intact. Now, there were no artefacts, one was driven by the desire to level their winning streak and the other was fuelled by an anger that made him more aggressive than he was last time, constantly pushing to be on the offensive. The silver-grey haired boy fired shots at Yatsuhashi in an effort to keep them him at bay. It had worked the first-time round, but now there was no stopping him, he charged straight through everything Mercury sent his way and very nearly cleaved his head off with the force of the strike her narrowly ducked under. He knew there wasn't much choice, so he fired shots all around him, encircling him like a lightshow of pure white. The tank stood there, letting it happen - a poor choice. Once he was done, he flicked his legs towards the two girls fighting the Cat Faunus, a stream of white flying towards them.

"No!" The towering student's words fell on deaf ears. His two partners were combatting the Cat Faunus and were making good strides; when you're facing down two of the best Huntresses-in-Training in that year who just so happen to be partners at the same time, you lose ground pretty fast and are on the constant defensive, even attempting anything otherwise meant getting hit. They attacked her until what was effectively a wave of energy came flying down at their feet destroying the ground on which they stood and sending them into the air. The screams from both girls were a mash of surprise and pain. When they'd both landed, a little dazed, Velvet was greeted with a full-on punch to the face sending her tumbling backwards, blood falling from her nose as her Aura wasn't up at all to block the attack. Her girlfriend got something much worse than a bloody nose. The Cat's claws extended and took a hard swipe at the gunner's gut. As she was still confused from the blast, Coco didn't even attempt to raise her Aura. The claws cut deep, slicing clean through her clothing and drawing large amounts of blood from her stomach. Her second scream was of pure agony. Her body gave way from the sudden shock and she fell to her knees, cradling her stomach to keep the blood inside, but there was a lot. Velvet's cry for her girlfriend was heard by all, even over everything. She ran to her partner's side and aided in trying to stop the bleeding.

Yatsuhashi saw red. He lost control completely. Ever since he was small he was told that his temper would get the better of him. At seven, that came true and he grew angry and kept punching the person who had upset him. When he came to his senses he saw the blood on his hands and the state of the person who'd angered him. From that day on he practiced intense meditation to keep those urges at bay. For eleven years it worked. But when Daerk tried to buy Fox and Neo's bodies a crack formed. He was emotionally weak and the scientist's actions hit him when he was weak. And again, the actions of both Mercury and the Cat hit the same spot. That crack broke through the barrier he had spent so many years building; he had about ten years of unchecked rage behind him that needed an outlet.

The Cat lifted her hand up and let Coco's blood drip from her claws into her mouth. She licked her lips when she was done.

"Your blood is so sweet." Her eyes turned to slits as she approached, her primal feline instincts being sent into overdrive. Velvet opted against trying to keep the blood in and instead went for keeping Coco safe. "Let's see which one of your blood I prefer." Bracing for the worst, Velvet hugged Coco tight, the world growing slightly muffled as she did.

"I won't leave you Coco," she promised, "I'm with you until the very end."

A deafening crack startled her, but still she remained tight to her girlfriend's ever weakening body. After a few seconds of nothing she allowed one eye to pry open. She looked at the woman, who to her horror was still standing (somehow) with her neck facing completely the wrong way. No sooner had Velvet seen that sight, the body eventually let gravity to the rest as she fell backwards very much dead. Yatsuhashi turned his attention to Mercury, whose smirk was gone and in its place, was fear. The giant broke into a sprint and even swinging past to pick up his sword and Mercury's cybernetic legs he managed to close the gap between them. The silver grey haired boy thought that his only choice now would be to fight, so he brought himself to a stop and then spun with a reverse roundhouse to fire a shot and/or kick the student away. But he was already too close for the boy as he was thrown into a nearby wall from a clothesline by the enraged student, getting embedded in the mortar. Without much time to register the pain he was experiencing, Mercury was now fighting to keep the pointy end of the tall student's giant blade away from his chest. He struggled, but the strain was becoming too great as it edged closer and closer. Yatsuhashi was pretty sure he heard someone calling his name and telling him to stop, but they were muffled against the rhythm of his racing heart. Retracting the blade slightly to make the boy lose balance he drove it unrestrained straight through the abdomen of him, killing him instantly.

"Merc!" Emerald cried, dropping her hold on Fox and running to the now dead boy's side. She tried to attack the giant, but she did nothing more than give him incentive to backhand her into the same wall as him, out cold the second his hand made contact with her. Yatsuhashi's sights were set on Daerk now. Much like before he ran at him, Greatsword dragging behind him. He grabbed the handle with his free hand, then five paces before he reached him he swung the blade to hit him, the impact undoubtedly killing him instantly due to his inability to access his Aura. But much like before the blade was stopped. Not by Cinder, but by Fox, Neo and a blood-soaked Velvet.

"Yatsu that's enough!" Fox called out, trying to appeal to his brother-in-arm's better nature. "This isn't you, _snap out of it!_ " He growled at them like a beast and pressed on with the attack, forcing the three of them back.

"Please Yatsuhashi, we're your friends, why would you try and kill your friends?" She wasn't sure which one of the events that had transpired in the last two minutes had spurred her crying; whether she was crying from seeing Coco slashed open, if she was crying from seeing two people brutally murdered in front of her, or crying because one of her closest friends was now trying to kill them all, but she was crying hard. "Listen to us!"

"Coco's dying Yatsu! We need your help!" The rage faded away slowly. Fox's sensed his Aura and saw the fire that was there was now being quelled and returning to the peaceful river he had come to recognise within his partner. Brown eyes blinked a few times before he spoke, his deep voice sounding rough from all the screaming he had been doing.

"Fox? Neo? Velvet, what's going-?" He cut his own sentence short as he realised his blade was hanging above their heads. "Oh, Gods no!" He threw his sword away in fear that he might continue to attack them. "What... have I done?" He looked around to see people on the ground, one with a small pool of blood forming from her mouth and two people crushed into the wall, the male oozing his crimson life essence onto the ground beneath him. "Was... this all me?"

"Yatsu do you not remember?" Those words, while they didn't help him with what he had done, made him realise why he had a hole in his memories.

"It happened..."

" _What happened Ya-_ " Neo's question in Sign was cut short when a blade was plunged into her lower back, her eyes turning white and a thin streak of blood coming from her mouth. Fox snapped round to see Daerk grinning at his sneak attack, so Fox closed the gap and cracked him over the head with a heavy right hook. Velvet caught Neo, who wasn't going to die from the stab wound but could very well be in pain for the next few days or so considering where she was stabbed and how deep the wound looked. The heavily scarred boy went to go and beat the scientist into a mess, who was merrily laughing to himself either out of joy or because Fox's hook knocked his brain out of whack, but he was pushed to one side by Yatsuhashi. Fox would have stopped him, but a strained cough brought him back to reality and reminded him in the grimmest way possible that he needed to focus on Coco if Velvet was looking after Neo; she looked deadly pale due to high blood loss, but she was a fighter and clearly wasn't ready to pass out just yet. The towering student picked up the knife Daerk had dropped in one hand and lifted the man up with the other, holding them both high off the ground.

"You deserve to die," he started. Whilst not entirely sure it was safe to let the boy who ruthlessly and near effortlessly killed two people not three minutes ago be confronting the very person who initiated the outburst of rage, the mage heard how Yatsuhashi spoke - he attacked the man with words rather than actions. His mind, for all intents and purposes, was functioning to a reasonable level, something that calmed her nerves a little, but not enough to let her relax completely. "Do you have no honour or common courtesy? My friends saved you from me and my rage, and your first reaction is to stab one of them in the back?"

"Well, that wasn't my _first_ thought. My _actual_ first thought was about h-" The grip on his shirt was tightened and his face was brought closer to the one holding him.

"I do not care! I care about the fact I lost control entirely for only the second time in my life, and it resulted in the deaths of two people by my hands. I care that all of my friends here, my team, are in varying degrees of discomfort and pain because of what you did. I care for that, but not for you. You bring shame to your family name." Yatsuhashi brought the knife high, but then chucked it straight down so that it buried itself blade first into the ground. He dropped Daerk and turned to deal with his friends, heading straight to Coco as she needed the most urgent medical attention. The shamed DeVanta tried to pull the knife from its resting place in the concrete, but it was forced in there really deep. Glancing round Yatsuhashi upon hearing strained grunts, saw the scene and sighed. Picking up a rock and testing the weight, he suddenly spun round and pelted him in the head with it, rendering him unconscious. He turned his much-needed attention back to Coco, who was very pale but still hanging in there.

"Yatsu, what happened with you?" Fox's new copper brown eyes looked at him weakly, needing to know the answer but never getting the luxury of it.

"When everyone is safe, I will explain it all. You have my word." Reluctantly, the boy nodded, wondering over to his girlfriend as Yatsuhashi carried Coco bridal style away from the carnage in front of them.

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 **{END OF PART 4}**

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For the record, I hate Mercury. He is portrayed as such a convincing asshole in canon that I simply despise him. Unless I get incentive to do otherwise, I will happily kill him off in every FanFic I write.

Holy hell, how about _that_ for a chapter to end Part 4 on? I went from my largest chapter being 6.4k words [pre-A/N] to now 8.1k [pre-A/N], and boy did it take a lot from me. I probably won't have another fight scene for a while, there's no way I think I'll ever top something like this.

Also, if some of you read through this and think that the story is probably more deserving of an **M** rating because of this chapter, please tell me ASAP; I don't want the story taken down for mislabelling this, especially with all the progress the story's made.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	36. Clouded, Decisions

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The slow, rhythmic beeping of the monitors were a comforting sound to Team CFVYN. Coco's condition had stabled significantly as everyone who could was collectively pooling their Aura into hers to help with healing, none more so that Yatsuhashi, who had been doing it since he picked her up back in Vale and did not stop until she was taken off him, but even now as they all sat or lay there recovering they pooled. She also had an Aura shot to get her own Aura up and running and healing itself, but she was told there would be large scars there for the rest of her life. Neo had a few stitches in her back to help the stab wound heal, though she admitted to Fox that this was actually her first battle scar and she was just the tiniest bit excited about it, though it would fade quite fast due to its small size, relative to Coco's of course. Velvet's nose was healing well, nothing too serious but with some minor discomfort for the next few days or so. Fox was tired, having ran before the fight started, then having to work hard against his opponents _then_ having to help support Neo to the hospital. His new scars still had blood near the surface, but not high enough to start spilling out. Seven in total, and he was not happy about it. He sat in a chair with Neo essentially on his lap, Yatsuhashi on the chair facing the bed directly and Velvet pulled a chair up close to the bed not leaving her girlfriend's side and not letting go of her hand. They all sat there, laying down for Coco, in silence as they processed what had happened the day before.

"I suppose now would be a good time to tell, right?" the large bass voice asked.

"It would be nice..." Coco strained, only to be immediately hushed by Velvet; she knew she wasn't supposed to talk and was instead supposed to be resting and healing, but Coco wasn't like that. Though judging by the looks on everyone else's faces, Yatsuhashi saw that her comment rang true. With a heavy sigh, he began.

"I have lived in Hai-no Hana all of my life. It is a somewhat decent sized village, compared to others throughout Anima, but it was all we needed. I am the eldest of three siblings, my sisters are twin both two years my junior." Team CFVY already knew this information, but Neo was new so this basic stuff was mostly for her benefit. "When I was five years old I was taken aside by my Father. 'Little one, you must control your anger' he said. 'You are angry, but I do not see why. Your anger weighs you down and stops you reaching the heights you are capable of.' That was his little comment on how small I was as a child; even at five there were children at four and even three who stood over me. But as I said, my Father attributed it to the anger bearing down on me and hindering my growth." The ice cream girl giggled silently, something her boyfriend noticed and he gave her a look.

' _What? I just find it hard to imagine Yatsuhashi being small._ '

"My anger persisted for the following years, until when I was seven it came to a head. I was still a small child, not having grown much by this age and my parents were on the verges of having to officially have me recognised with Dwarfism. A boy in my class at school was antagonising me and the few friends I had, saying how we were all weak and stupid; _very_ childish insults looking back. I have to admit, even I do not remember the catalyst, but he said something specific and I lost it completely. I blanked out, not recalling anything from that time. I regained my composure having been restrained by four members of staff and saw the boy bleeding on the floor and my hands stained with my own and his blood. My parents were called in to see their son crying in the Principal's office, blood on his knuckles and to have the situation explained to them through eyewitness accounts, as Hai-no Hana avoided using Dust for anything expect necessities - cameras not being deemed necessary. After being antagonised to my breaking point, I apparently leapt at him and knocked into him with the force of someone much older and stronger than me. The way he landed hurt, but he didn't have time to feel that as I... proceeded to hit him again and again and again, bloodying my knuckles with every swing. In nine seconds, I had hit this seven year old boy with the force of someone twice my age and three times as strong over a dozen times. He survived, but he was never the same.

"My Mother scolded me for days afterwards, and when her disappointment was finally voiced completely my Father took me to the Mountain range beyond the village with only enough supplies to last the two of us a week. We went for a month; but it was his way of teaching self-control. In that month, I was taught very basic meditation, the same sort of things I taught you all when you asked to learn. It was constant. Meditating for at least four hours, then breaking for some time to relieve bladders and eat sparingly, then resume meditating. It worked. When I returned I was a different boy. I was calm, collected, I never lashed out and I had even started growing, having not done so properly in about two years. I was happy with the results of my Father's training, so I maintained it. Every day I woke up with the sun and meditated, clearing my mind and calming me for the day ahead. At lunch, I would go off and meditate for fifteen minutes. I got home, I'd meditate before doing chores. I'd meditate for as long as I felt necessary before I went to sleep. I did all of that to keep my mind clear and my anger contained. By the time I started learning about weapons and fighting I was so different from the boy that attacked his fellow student that I wouldn't recognise myself were I to look back. I chose a basic Greatsword because I believed using a gun based weapon adds another layer of intricacy to a weapon that doesn't really need one a lot of the time. The first time I picked up the sword I was nearly thirteen years old, yet already approaching 5'6". By the time I'd grown accustomed to it I was 6 months older and now also 6ft exactly. When I had mastered the sword completely I was sixteen and the height you see me now.

"All that anger I had built up inside me had been purged from my body and I had grown into the man my Father hoped I could be. My sisters, who had been scared of me for years after my incident, had changed their attitudes towards me just as my attitude had changed to everything else. They saw me as a role model, and my Mother couldn't be happier at that; she always wanted me to be there for them, to be the brother they deserved." He took a long breath in, giving everyone else time to process their thoughts. No one spoke though, they knew he wasn't done. "But as it turns out my rage was not purged; merely locked away behind a wall of emotions in my mind. The thought of your death made things hard, and made me vulnerable. Daerk wanted, even 'needed', your bodies so that he could try and get the Parchment from them and use it himself. I was emotionally weak from the day just gone, so his directness hit a nerve. A crack formed in the wall that had been built in my mind keeping those extreme emotions at bay, but it was only a crack. Yesterday was..." His fists balled as words failed and his head lowered, self-loathing taking over as his words failed. Neo looked at Fox, gave his hands a quick squeeze and walked over to her tall teammate. She did nothing more than give him a hug, but that was all it took for tears to start falling from his eyes. Velvet and Fox quickly joined the hug, Coco looking on wishing she could get up and be part of it as well. Emotions from Yatsuhashi weren't common. Fury had never happened before today for Team CFVYN, tears were more commonplace but still a rarity.

"Yatsu..." Coco said from behind them all, their heads turning to look at her. "I know it may not be what you want to hear... but I'm glad you lost it." Her girlfriend snapped at her, sounding appalled at what she had just said.

"How could you say that Coco?!"

"Because..." she started with a raised voice, but quickly stopped as the shouting only hurt. Coughing a bit made her realise that it wasn't the best decision she'd ever made, and the Faunus felt similarly. "Because even though it was brutal, he _did_ save us. At least one of us would have died Velvs; definitely me, if it weren't for all your efforts in keeping me alive and Yatsu carrying me to the ship. That Cat would have killed Velvet too, sorry hun, Daerk would have gotten bored of torturing Fox and eventually would have killed him, and no offense Neo but I don't think even you could have taken on your ex-team and a highly skilled White Fang member at all once without suffering great injuries or dying altogether. So actually, we might have _all_ died yesterday." Her optimistic look on the scenario actually eased his mind a bit, but not enough.

"Thank you for your kind words Coco," a smile formed on his face as he stood from his chair, "but if you do not mind, I would like some time on my own. Just to clear my thoughts some more." Without waiting for approval, the gentle giant left the room and headed outside. He wasted no time in removing the smile from his face and heading straight back to the dorm. Neo felt that something was off and mentioned it to the rest of CFVN.

" _I want to follow him. He doesn't seem right._ "

"He's not right Neo," her boyfriend reminded her, "just give him some time to get better."

" _No this feels bad. It feels... I dunno, like he's already set on something. I want to make sure._ " Nods approving her came from everyone. " _I'll be as quick as I can._ " With a quick kiss from her boyfriend, Neo went after him. She made sure there was enough distance between them so that she wouldn't have to constantly remain out of sight, but near enough that she could still spot him; hard to miss a 7ft tall student with a Greatsword though.

* * *

"I fail to understand your proposal Mr. Daichi, what is it you wanted?" Ozpin sat as he usually did; elbows resting on his desk, fingers interlocked, his chin resting on his hands and leaning forward interested in what was being said; whether that was genuine interest or just an act he was obliged to perform as Headmaster of Beacon no one but he, and maybe Professor Goodwitch, knew the answer to.

"I want you to expel me from your school." The student looked tired, but he spoke with determination.

"I'm sorry, but I fail to see the reason as to why I should-" The response he got came fast and without apology.

"Because I am a danger. I'm an unnecessary risk to the school and as such I feel it should be removed."

"There are many risks we as Huntsmen take in our lives. Some will prove to be too dangerous, other risks pay off. I do not think that there have been any risks I have taken that I have regretted when regarding my students and the decisions I make for and about them." During that time, Neo materialised into office and hid behind one of the large pillars. Her team needed to make sure he was alright.

"Sir have you seen any reports of the incident?"

"I have. So many White Fang members out in broad daylight, along with Cinder Fall, two of her associates and this Daerk DeVanta; the ringleader you presume?"

"It makes sense sir, he was the one who wanted Fox and Neo dead."

"Why did you ask?" Ozpin wondered, bringing the subject away from any tangent. "I thought you'd know by now that any event that happens concerning my students gets back to me eventually."

"How many dead?"

"Yatsuhashi, I do not think that you-"

"How many?!" The green man sighed, taking the first sip from his cup since they'd started talking.

"No civilian casualties of any sort. 12 counts of concussion, 6 counts of harm to the person's body - yourselves included, 1 serious injury being Ms. Adel's wound and 2 confirmed death." Yatsuhashi shuddered on hearing that. "A female Cat Faunus was found with blood on her claws and her neck twisted round completely the wrong way, and a boy with a sizable hole in his stomach. I shall hazard a guess and say that the stab wound came from your Greatsword."

"You guessed correctly."

"And the Faunus?"

"I was the one to snap her neck."

"I see. And yet the very few eyewitnesses that remained there throughout recount how every person from Team CFVY, with the possible exception of yourself, were on their last legs and most likely would have died until you went into a berserker rage and killed those two. I see it as no more than protecting your team, though the lengths you went to maybe were a bit extreme but nothing a few lessons on self-control wouldn't buff out of you."

"And you would be happy with having a killer walking your campus?" The Headmaster rose from his seat and walked over to the window, looking down at his school below.

"Long before any of my current students were even born, there was this girl. She very nearly killed her teammate on Initiation. By the end of her first year alone she had racked up plenty of kills, not just of Grimm. There were twelve corpses to her name by the time she was where you and the rest of Team CFVY are right now, mostly wranglers and poachers who were unlucky enough to be near her. And yet she graduated with her team. Do you know of Blake Belladonna from Team RWBY in the Year below?"

"Yeah, our teams are all good friends with one another."

"Well, then I assume you are aware of her Faunus heritage?" The towering boy nodded. "Well, she had done many terrible things before attending my school, yet nothing stopped me from allowing her in. Though I will admit that what she did back then and what you did now are in two separate ballparks. An ex-Faunus Rights Extremist with a large number of extreme cases of violence against her name from before yet with a squeaky clean record once arriving - short of any impromptu missions the girls from Team RWBY take themselves on, versus a student hailing from a small village in Anima with a clean record from before, save a single incident of extreme rage back at age seven, and with only one tarnish on his record here, that being an outburst of anger a day ago that ended with two people dead. Or, if you wanted a fourth example, a woman who left her home in Atlas and started a spree of paid murders, thefts, attacks; have I missed anything Ms. Neo?"

Busted.

She moved from her hiding spot and jogged up to Yatsuhashi, hugging him tight around his waist and not wanting to let him go. After as much contact as she deemed necessary she looked at Ozpin and shook her head at his question.

"There you are then Mr. Daichi. I have presented you with three different examples of people who have done terrible things both before and after being here, yet all of who I am willing to keep at my school until their graduation."

"Still, that does not change my mind sir. I want you to let me leave." This was the first time Neo had actually heard what her teammate wanted and her immediate reaction was to smack him in the stomach and furrow her eyebrows at him with a frown.

" _Why would you do that to us Yatsu?_ "

"Because this school would be better off without me."

" _No it would not; if anything the school would be_ _ **worse**_ _without you here._ "

"Neo does make a good point Mr. Daichi." Neo was slightly taken aback, again, by the fact Ozpin could read what she was saying. "I cannot lose one of the members of the greatest team I have ever put through their paces here at Beacon. And losing you would bring it down to a three person team, something that impacts everyone else in a huge way."

"You can have Neo fill in that role. She is more than capable."

" _If I was going to join, I want to join with all of you; Caffeine wouldn't be the same without you._ "

"Pardon the curiosity, but what do you mean 'Caffeine'?"

"It's the name Coco gave our five-piece team when we defeated the Nuckelavee. It's just CFVY with the N for Neo at the end."

"Hmm..." the man readjusted his glasses so they sat better on his face. "I think that could work." The younger two looked at one another, then back at the man in question. "Alright then. Mr. Daichi after some consideration I am denying your request to let you leave this school. You shall be remaining here until your graduation in little over two years or you do something so bad that I have no choice but to let you leave - though I doubt that bridged shall be crossed. And, seeing as how you and your team leader have already made your minds up and I'm considering you've already practically moved in, Ms. Neo; Welcome to Beacon."

He extended out a hand to the mute who took time to realise what had transpired. If she shook his hand it'd be official. If she didn't...

Oh, who was she kidding?

She took his hand and gave it a firm shake, grinning like a madwoman the entire time. "You do of course realise that due to the time in which you arrived you are not able to pass to as high of a standard as your fellow teammates or students?" She slowly acknowledged that fact, but she didn't care too much. "So long as you were made aware... I suggest you go with your teammate down to the Reception Area and get the necessary sizes for your uniform now so that it's ready for when you start next week."

"Sir?" Ozpin's head turned to look up at the boy, a sight he rarely had to do. "Can I at least have some leniency for the first week or two back? Just so that I can build up my inner wall back up?"

"That, Mr. Daichi, is something I _can_ allow. You may have up to the beginning of the third week to get your mind in a state you feel is suitable in your own time; after that I must insist you do it when it does not impact your studies and revision. You do have exams coming up soon."

"Understood sir, thank you." Both students turned and headed to the elevator, Yatsuhashi picking up a large rucksack on the way past that must have been containing all the stuff he needed for the trip he was going to make. Neo chalked it up to either being so sure that he'd get the green light or the fact that he was worried he'd come here first, get the go ahead, then head back to the dorm and meet resistance there.

" _What can we do to help Yatsu? And don't say 'nothing', because you and I know that wouldn't be true and I'm pretty sure everyone else could see through that charade too._ "

"What you can do," he sighed with a smile, "is keep up that positive attitude for me." The mute grinned at him, her new teammate and the polar opposite of her; dark skinned, tall, male... there was bound to be more. "But is what Ozpin said true?"

" _About...?_ "

"You. That you ran from home."

" _I didn't run, I just left._ " A thought crossed her mind. " _I haven't been back since I died._ " A second, slightly more worrying thought crossed her mind. " _They have access to official records, all that state I_ _ **am**_ _dead! I need to go there, they might get the wrong end of the stick!_ "

"Take Fox with you." Heterochromia disappeared for a moment and was replaced with vanilla white. A large hand rested on her shoulder in reassurance. "The way I see it, if you're going to see them you might as well take him. It gets it out of the way then." Pink and brown returned upon hearing the reasoning behind his request just as the elevator doors slid open for the ground floor.

" _Y'know, for someone who doesn't do the whole relationship thing, you're pretty darn good at giving advice for it._ " He nonchalantly shrugged as they walked over to the desk.

"What can I say?"

" _More than me_ " she joked, bringing a loud belly laugh from the tank.

* * *

 **F - 'Hey hun, Coco's been discharged. x'**

 **N - 'That was quick. x'**

 **F - 'I know!'**

 **'But Coco is a fighter, she was going to make it through once she started talking and gaining a bit of colour in her cheeks again.'**

 **'Getting to that stage was the most stressful bit though'**

 **N - 'At least she'll be back in the dorm safe and sound soon. x'**

 **F - 'True, she'd been put under strict orders to take it easy**

 **'Guess who isn't happy about it? x'**

 **N - 'Is it her? x'**

 **F - 'We have a winner! xx'**

 **N - 'Ooh, what do I win? x'**

 **F - 'I dunno, I might need some time to think the answer to that x'**

 **N - 'I look forward to it. xx'**

 **'Oh, I have something I need to ask/tell you when we're together again x'**

 **F - 'Can't you tell me now? xx'**

 **N - 'Be patient! xx'**

 **'I'll see you soon anyway xx'**

 **F - 'See you soon Ni xx'**

* * *

"Velvet I don't want to rest now, there's still time to do things today." She didn't get words as a response, but instead a poke to the exposed, still rather sore stomach. "Argh!" She glared at her girlfriend with a look that showed her betrayal. "Bitch..."

"Love you too Coco. Now rest, or I'll poke you harder."

"You know I like it harder anyw- Ow!"

"Next time, I'll hit it and we'll have to go back to the Infirmary get you sorted again."

"I'll be good..."

"Good girl." Dark brown eyes squinted at the Faunus, who got to work making the bed comfortable for her injured team leader with a large smug grin on her face. True to what Coco mentioned, the clock in the dorm showed that it was only 2:01pm, so it was understandable why the fashionista was restless and wanting to do something else. Fox took the opportunity of the pair of them being preoccupied to jump in the shower. He turned the knob and let the water heat up as he stripped down to jump in. The new scars he'd acquired yesterday stung when he removed his clothes, much like every other time he'd gotten new scars. He also knew that this next part was going to sting something fierce, but he needed to get clean.

Once the water was hot enough, he jumped under the shower. The sensation was so pleasing, all of the aches he had and his tense muscles relaxed when the water hit. But at the same time, it sent sharp pains running through his core. Every time a droplet of water touched the newly scarred skin it burnt. He needed to be quick. Washing his skin rid him of the sweat, grim and minute amounts of blood he had on him, but as he felt his pores opening he also felt the newer scars peel open as well. He quickly finished scrubbing under the hot water, then flipped the temperature gauge down until it clicked, reaching the coldest it could in seconds.

"All I'm saying Coco is that we've got a week left, so now'd be a perfect time to get a little bit of studying in."

"I'm aware of that hunny-bun, but if you want me to rest then shouldn't I get some rest?"

"Coco Adel, you can't possibly go from wanting, nay needing, to do something to curb your boredom one minute when I suggest you rest, to actively wanting to rest after I give you a suggestion for something to do that doesn't tickle your fancy."

"Ooh Velvet, you dirty little tease you..."

"I didn't say what I know you thought I said," the Rabbit huffed "and you know it. Besides I don't think having your lower core doing spasms whenever you orgasm is going to do those stitches any good, is it? We want them to stay there until-" her sentence was cut short by the sound of a boy in the shower next door swapping from the extreme high heat to the freezing cold of the shower. The sound was reminiscent of a primitive monkey call, the boy oohing and ahhing in quick succession to one another. The partners looked at each other in surprise, then saw the laugh building in their partners eyes. Within seconds the pair of them were laughing uncontrollably in their dorm, enjoy their little private performance and each making notes as to never let Fox live that down.

After braving the sudden climate change, he jumped in. The cold still made his spine tingle, but the icy touch if the water helped seal all his pores and would keep the scars from opening. He stayed there no longer than he needed to before knocking the dial back to normal and turning the shower off. He dried his skin and hair with his own towel, throwing on some clothes he brought in with him, put his dirty clothes in the hamper and left the bathroom for someone else to use. He hadn't been out of the bathroom for long when Yatsuhashi and Neo walked through the door.

"You feel a bit better now Yatsu?" his partner asked.

"I am, yes. Thank you, Fox."

"Good to hear." His focus shifted to his girlfriend, who was already walking to him anyway. "What did you want to tell me Neo?"

' _I'll let Yatsuhashi finish explaining first._ ' The boy nodded, then looked at the gentle giant realising he was carrying a bag on his shoulder.

"I wanted to leave Beacon." Various calls of confusion and betrayal were fired at the boy before he raised his hands up to stop them and explain further. "Ozpin refused to grant my request anyway, but let me speak and explain why. I felt that I was a danger to everyone, just knowing that I don't really have any walls built up in my mind to keep that from happening again soon. I wanted him to kick me out of Beacon so that I could spend weeks, months, years building mental those walls back up so that they may never crumble again. As I said, Ozpin refused but he has given me a pass to take time off for the first two weeks of term to help me rebuild my mental barriers again. That is what I will be doing from now on this week. All I ask from you for this next week is to let me be and let me do my own thing - I would like this process to be as quick as it can be."

"We understand Yatsu, you have our word," Coco told him, getting a smile from her taller teammate. Trying to get herself out of bed wasn't going to happen, the pain from her stomach hurt when she moved a certain way. "Guys, go and hug him for me." Brown eyes rolled as the big guy walked over to the bed so that Coco could be part of the group hug as well.

"But that is not the only news we bring back from Ozpin, is it Neo?" The petite woman smiled and jumped back a little so that everyone could see her. She grinned as she signed,

" _Ozpin has officially approved it. I've been accepted into Beacon and will be part of Team Caffeine as of next week!_ " The two girls both cheered at the news, and Fox ran up and picked his girlfriend, now official teammate, up and spun her around a couple of times before putting her down and catching her in a long and powerful kiss.

"Neo that's wonderful!"

" _Yup, I should have my uniform ready by the end of the week._ "

"You'll look as amazing as always Neo," Coco mentioned, causing the mute to blush slightly.

" _There is one other thing though..._ " In comparison to how fast and excited she was when signing the fact she was now a Beacon student, this little sentence was slow and with a fair bit of hesitation, something everybody picked up on.

"Neo?" For a very brief moment, Neo wished she hadn't mentioned this just now, but she had messaged Fox regarding this so he would ask anyway. She genuinely wasn't sure how to word it - well, honestly, I suppose.

" _I... need to go home to see my family..._ "

"Okay, that's not so bad Neo," Fox interrupted her, not knowing the rest of the sentence.

" _And I would like you to come and meet them Fox._ "

"You... huh?" Stumped, Fox looked at Neo for clarification, his dark copper eyes meeting her own pink and brown. ' _Really Ni?_ '

' _Really. I need to go and see them anyway so that they know I'm not dead - I haven't since the Museum and I... kind of destroyed the official document stating that I was no longer dead. By all medical records, I am dead. They'd need to see me to know for sure._ '

' _And you want me to go-_ '

' _To get it out of the way. Two birds, one stone. Plus, little week away in Atlas with your girlfriend doesn't sound too bad, right?_ ' There was silence in their minds for a moment and the eerie lack of sounds kept creeping up on them.

"Okay then." He spoke normally, breaking both silences that had formed in the room. "When are we leaving?"

" _You... are going to come with me?_ "

"Neo, you are my girlfriend. You are now also my teammate. I wouldn't let you go alone anyway - none of us would." As a solitary tear formed in her left eyes, Neo looked around to see the rest of her team smiling and nodding at the statement. Once her sweep confirmed that statement, she stood on her tiptoes and hugged Fox as tight as she could manage. "It'd easily take a day to travel up there, wouldn't it? We don't exactly have a lot of time to spend there either; how we going to do this?"

"If memory serves, there is a Bullhead that would land you near a larger airfield, one with ships that frequently travel to Atlas." Yatsuhashi had clearly put some thought into it, maybe he was planning on travelling away from Vale and Anima when he was 'kicked out' so that they were unsure where he'd be. A smart ploy, all things considered. "They leave thrice a day, you could catch the afternoon one if you hurry but take nothing with you, or the early evening ship if you start packing now." Team CFVYN looked at one another, then nodded in unison. They'd work as a team to help get Fox and Neo packed up and ready to leave as soon as possible. They'd already proved it before, but they were going to be a strong team.

* * *

Part 5!

Wow. Just... wow. If you told me 7 months ago that I'd be writing something that continued on for this long, I'd have laughed at you. The ' **Senseless** ' AU has really grown into something quite phenomenal, and you know that there's going to be all the usual things in there; comedy, innuendos, sadness, not sadness (happiness, that's the one - tired brain really don't work good on me) and of course my favourite orange and pink pairing

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	37. Doing This with You is the Cherry on Top

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Whilst none of them had the gift of Speed like Ruby did, they made record time in getting everything packed and ready for Fox and Neo. The couple bid their farewells to Coco and Velvet, who were staying in the dorm so that the former could rest and recover for a bit.

" _Bye guys, hope you recover by the time we get back._ "

"I should do, thanks Neo."

"See you Coco, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"So, a lot of things then?" Fox rolled his eyes with a chuckle.

"You're meant to be recovering, remember? Just lay back and relax."

"That's Velvet's line, not yo- Ow!" She received a fairly forceful prod to the scars from her girlfriend.

"This is just too easy right now... have fun you two."

" _Will do. Bye!_ " They'd changed their clothes so that they had a little more comfort when travelling and also a bit more protection from the colder weather up in Atlas; Fox had never been but according to Neo even summertime up in Atlas had a chill in the air. Most high-end families like the Schnee or the Glasur Families had their clothing made especially so that it kept the chill out in all weathers. The rest had to make do with what they had, which wasn't terrible but nothing compared to what they had. Neo was dressed in full Cherry attire; a sleeveless black blouse with white frills on the chest and collar with a black ribbon bow hanging from front of the collar, medium-length black armbands on both of her wrists, a knee-length skirt fastened with a white belt, black shoes and white legwarmers, all with her hair done up in a twin tail style and completely black save a few white streaks and her eyes a permanent green.

Fox was much less disguised as Neo was, simply opting to wear one of his new t-shirts, his new hoodie (which still had a faint smell of vanilla from when Neo wore it) along with his regular trousers and shoes. He also wore his weapons on his wrist, albeit retracted entirely into just their new bracelet form (had to thank Ruby for that upgrade when he got back) Fox carried a large bag on his back that held most of their spare clothes, including Neo's normal outfit, and a few other things. Neo also carried a bag, though not nearly as big but it had most of the food they'd need for the journey.

"I hope that everything will be alright for you two," Yatsuhashi shouted, fighting slightly to be heard over the sound of the Bullhead's Dust engines.

" _We'll be fine. Please don't let what happened yesterday get you down Yatsu,_ " Neo signed. Admittedly, using Sign was probably the best idea right now considering the noise, so the tank switched to it.

" _It won't. I should be much better about everything when you return. Farewell._ " The couple waved back and slid the side door shut as it took off, leaving them on their own.

"You nervous, Ni?" Were she capable of making any sound, she would have scoffed at that remark. Instead, she smirked and flicked her boyfriend on the head, her Heterochromia consciously returning as she did so.

' _Why would I be nervous? They're my family. The real question is: are_ _ **you**_ _nervous about meeting the future in-laws?_ ' Fox choked on the air, coughing and spluttering everywhere. He spoke in his head so that his coughing could subside properly.

' _"In-laws"? Neo isn't it a little early - heck, very early, in fact - to be thinking about that sort of thing? Who knows whether we'll be together in three or six months' time, let alone years._ ' She gave him the best puppy dog eyes and trembling lip she could manage.

' _Do you not... love me anymore?_ ' He found it increasingly difficult not to succumb to the pressure of looking at her like this. Clearly, she'd been saving using this for an extreme moment - by anyone's books, this counted as an extreme case. He caved, hugging her close to his body.

"Of course I love you. It was just... so sudden." He broke the hug to look in her eyes again. "I'm just a little confused, why suddenly with the in-laws?" She rolled her eyes and shook her head, like it was the most obvious thing in the world that he was missing.

' _Fox, ask yourself this: "Would Neo honestly leave me for anyone else?" Or even: "Would I leave Neo?" There's no other couple like us; Fate brought us together, but love is keeping us here. I will admit, I could have very easily disappeared from the Hospital and never could have set foot in Vale again. I could have disappeared. But I came back time and time again because something was drawing me back, even before I knew about the link the Parchment made. You intrigued me. I kind of knew I always wanted to be with you, but I never really could express it._ ' She looked away a little shamefully at her confession, knowing that it was something she maybe could have saved for later or the trip back; any other time except mere minutes after walking on to the aircraft. A scarred pair of lips pressing against her forehead broke her concentration, bringing her back to the Realm of the Here and Now.

"Neopolitan, I would never leave you. I was just a little surprised, but I agree with what you were inferring. No, I would not leave you, just as you wouldn't leave me. In-laws doesn't seem too bad a thought now, though I'm making it clear right now that that sort of thing will not be happening until we are gone from Beacon and have settled down into life a little bit more."

' _I can live with that. For now though,_ ' she pecked him on the lips and then lay her head on his lap, ' _I just want to rest a little. We've had a hectic past couple of days, and I don't want to be rocking up to my parents' house going "Hey Mom, I'mma go sleep now" before I do anything else._ '

"Makes sense." He adjusted so that she was as comfortable as she could be. "That means you have to let me sleep on you when we're on the Atlas-bound ship."

' _No need, there's enough people and we'd be woken up anyway._ '

"Whatever you say hun." He leaned down to give her a quick kiss on the nose before he sat up again and stared out of the window watching Beacon drift slowly to the horizon.

* * *

Neo was in more need of sleep than she had originally thought. Normally she'd be fine, needing only a few hours of sleep to be rested and ready for the day, but now sleeping was just bliss. Fox had to wake her up later so that they could get on the ship, but until that time he knew he had to manage. Sitting her up. he slowly and slightly awkwardly shimmied her onto his back for a piggyback, then grabbed their stuff. He slung the smaller of the two bags they had over Neo's shoulders and she carried the other in his hand. The setting sun was disappearing behind the treeline of the Emerald Forest in the distance and night was slowly making its way in. The light made Neo's face glow, her skin shining in contrast to her hair and a large portion of her outfit, all of which absorbed a lot of the light that hit it and made in flat in comparison, save a few white streaks in her hair that slowly started reappearing. The soft smile on her face from her dream warmed his heart, and something told him he'd need a lot more of that if they were heading to Atlas.

He got to the Main Gate after 15 minutes of walking. Knowing they'd need to speak to each of them, Fox had to wake Neo up despite the fact she'd not be particularly happy about it. But her eyes shot open and she was up like a flick of a switch.

' _Right, let's go!_ ' Fox was still a little confused as to how she could do that; he felt the need to ask.

"How is it that you can go from sleeping peacefully to fully awake in a second? It takes me minutes to even become vaguely aware of my surroundings."

' _Who said I was sleeping?_ '

"What do you... you weren't asleep at all were you? You just hitched a ride on my back just because you could." A giant grin formed on her face, knowing full well she'd been busted but honestly not caring at all. Fox narrowed his eyes, the gesture being all he needed to express how he felt. Neo blew him a kiss, then gestured towards the gate, readjusting the bag on her shoulders.

The couple waited in line in silence to everyone else, but they were talking in their head about this and that, with Neo constantly reminding him that she was 'Cherry' until they got to her old home. If anyone looked at him, they could tell Fox was nervous. He had never been this far away from his family and friends before and that thought unnerved him a bit. A small yet soft hand held his own and a gentle grin brought him back down to ground level and reminded him that everything will be okay. She also reminded him that she could still hear his thoughts, something he cursed himself for forgetting.

The pair of them made it through the checks in one piece, and nothing was called into question - though they would need to go through a second lot of checks a little bit further down the line as they would be carrying weapons onto the ship. Sailing through those checks as well, they were given their tickets and their Huntsman Badges to confirm that they were legally allowed to be carrying weapons with them and boarded the ship heading to Atlas. Compared to the ships that brought them to Beacon in their first year, this ship was massive; but Fox honestly expected nothing more from Atlas. It almost looked like a giant flying cruise ship with its multiple levels of windows and observation platforms, albeit glassed off observation platforms because of the potential high altitudes they would be flying at.

' _If you're done staring at it Fox,_ ' his girlfriend teased, ' _we've got seats to find._ ' They were seated in 5 minutes, up in the air in 10 then told they could get up and move around in 20. They made their way to one of the observation platforms on the ship, with only two other people there with them - neither with the anyone else.

"Well, 'Cherry', are you excited to be going home? I know it's been a while for you."

' _Hey, I heard those quotation marks around my name._ ' The boy shrugged, staring out at the clouds as they approached ever closer to the top of the window. ' _But in answer to your question; yes, I am excited. But nervous at the same time. I remember how they got when I lost my voice - my Father felt dreadful, said that it was entirely his fault for me being the way I am. He said that if he had just let the condition be, I may still be able to talk; the medicine I was given reacted with my Aura at the low dose levels it dropped to and sent it into overdrive. It took my voice with it. Mom was pretty bad too. Uncle Lang was the worst, no doubt about it._ ' He didn't hear it, but Fox saw Neo's shoulders rise and fall noticeably as she fought against any emotions swelling to the surface. ' _They may think I'm still dead. I mean, I_ _ **did**_ _destroy the "This Person Isn't Dead Anymore" paperwork from the Hospital, both the physical and electronical copies - but they might have seen it too. It's not like I'm hard to spot in medical records, even without an image. Just search for heterochromia borealis and there I am in that small list of about 10. I hope they haven't looked at the records... I_ _ **really**_ _hope they haven't..._ ' Her hands were gripping the railing tight, her knuckles white from how tight she held onto it. Her grip eased as her boyfriend slid his hands next to hers, letting her know he was there for her. She loosened her grip on the metal and let him slide his hand underneath for her to hold instead, the grip much gentler now she was holding his hands than what it was a moment ago.

"If they have, I just think you've got to be truthful about why you did it. In the time I've known you, you haven't done things without reason. Unless this was an exception, doing that is no different. They will understand. They are your family; they may not support you all the time, but that fact will never change."

' _There you go again, finding the right words first time round._ ' Her hands let go of his as she instead chose to hug his middle whilst staring out as the ship broke through the clouds to reveal the clear, uninterrupted night sky.

"That wasn't always the case, y'know. But you bring out the right words." He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and joined her in staring out at the worlds beyond their own. "I'll tell you now, if I had a view like this - I'd honestly stay and watch it for the rest of my life."

' _That's great and all..._ ' Neo started. Fox heard the fact she was annoyed, so turned to look at her. Yup, she stood there with a furrowed brow and was giving him death stares. ' _...but I noticed you weren't looking at me!_ ' Fox couldn't help but laugh, gaining the attention of one of the other people on the platform.

"Why would I do that?" At first those words sounded like an insult, like he was only doing this as a joke. Neo took it like that at first and was ready to run away and most likely kill him the first chance she got. Fortunately for him, he finished his train of thought before she did anything stupid like that. "I thought it was pretty obvious that I wanted to do that with you anyway, that I didn't need to say anything. But: I would watch you, be with you, be proud of you for the rest of my life." His free arm made its way round and rested on her other shoulder. "And I mean that, Neo." The last word was whispered, knowing full well she didn't want her cover blown. But by him using it, it showed her he genuinely felt that.

' _Apology accepted._ ' Her grin was enough to lighten the mood between them. They stayed there for a minute or two, rocking side to side in unison. ' _Now, how about we actually go and get some shut eye before we get to Atlas?_ '

"That sounds great. Lead the way."

* * *

The fact the light from the sun disappeared from the bottom to top meant that they had dropped below the clouds. She let her eyes open as slowly as she could, fatigue having actually set in when her body hit the bed late last night. She was partially thankful that she was only wearing a sleeping top and her underwear, it made the bed seem even more relaxing. She eased herself up to get a better look out the window and saw a sea of pale grey, followed by another sea of blue. Besides that, there wasn't a lot more she could see, so she got up and walked to the small window in the room they were given for the journey over. Staring out, she glanced upon an all too familiar sight: Atlas.

Home.

' _Fox look at this! Isn't the view amazing?_ '

"You can say that again..." She turned around to see Fox sitting up in bed, staring straight at her behind like it was the only thing left in the world.

' _Get your ass out of bed and take a look outside._ ' Feeling his joke didn't quite get the response he was looking for but not wanting to aggravate his girlfriend at a time like this, he made his way to the window. Neo heard the intake of breath as copper brown eyes gazed upon a Kingdom of marble white buildings. Looking at him, she saw him mesmerised by the sight of the city. Grinning, she mentioned, ' _This, I don't mind you staring at over me._ '

"Neo, _this_ is Atlas?" he managed, still awestruck.

' _Yup. This is the Kingdom I grew up in. I didn't see a lot of it for many years, but I've been back since then and I've had a wander around from time to time. There's a few places I'd like to take you whilst we're here, if that's okay with you._ '

"Of course it is Ni." Smiling, as sense finally came back to him, he gave Neo a quick kiss on the forehead before walking towards the small set of drawers by his side of the bed. "Come on, I want to get out of here as fast as possible." Sadly for him, he missed the evil smirk grow on her face and her irises swap colours from Cherry's green eyes so that pink sat in her right eye and brown in her left. Not eight paces away from the window, a sudden weight fell on Fox's back and he tumbled to the floor as Neo had jumped on his back, his chest planted firmly on the carpet.

' _Oh no, you've fallen and been trapped by the vicious Ice Cream Death Monster! There is no leaving now!_ '

"Not the Ice Cream Death Monster! Anything but that!" he cried, playing along. "Whatever shall I d- ow!" He was cut off by pain when she rested her knees, quite heavily considering her size, on the small of his back and held her hands at the top of his arms with a firm grip to keep him from moving.

' _I don't know, what_ _ **are**_ _you going to do?_ ' she teased, clearly enjoying this.

"Give up." He flopped, unwilling to be part of this silly little game anymore. She wasn't best pleased about that, so she tried again; pressing down harder and tightening her grip. He grimaced at the pain, but he was face down in the carpet so she couldn't see it.

' _I said "what are you going to do?"_ '

"Give up. I surrender. The Monster has won, all is doomed." He really wasn't playing along at all, and that irked Neo. She flipped him over so that he was laying on his back facing her now. His face looked as uninterested as his voice sounded. She leaned in close, staring right at his eyes, though he didn't look back.

' _One more chance Fox. What are you going to d-_ ' Before she had time to react, Fox's lips pressed against hers for a long, stolen kiss. As time drew on past the initial shock of the gesture, Neo settled into it. She leaned back gradually, letting him get to a sitting position so that they were both comfortable as they remained lip locked. Their foreheads remained in contact as they broke for air, Fox speaking through small yet deliberate intakes of air.

"What I am going to do, Neo, is not spell my plan out to the enemy and either let them think they've won or make them lose their concentration. When the defences are down, I will strike. It will be when they least expect it, making the ploy all the more satisfying when it works - there is no way this wouldn't work." He grinned, proud of his achievement.

' _Props to you for the strategy. However,_ ' in one movement she hoped he wasn't expecting, she grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him back down to the floor, her legs now straddling him and her hips resting on his stomach, ' _what did you have planned for a counter strategy, like this one?_ '

"This is your counter strategy?" All he got was a smile in reply. "Well, as bad as I know it is to agree with the strategies and plans of the enemy, I have to say I like where this strategy looks like it's heading." His hands grabbed her exposed hips as hers slid their way down to his chest. "Care to show me the rest of the strategy?" Her hips deliberately slid backwards so that her crotch rubbed against his own as her lips landed on his once again. Her mind spoke clearly even though her mouth was incapable of producing words; even if it could, she was otherwise engaged with kissing her beautiful boyfriend.

' _Fine then. Step two:_ '

* * *

Cherry strutted out of the room afterwards, her face glowing a fainter tint than her namesake. Fox walked out soon after with the rest of the stuff that Neo didn't carry behind him, his face blushing slightly; given his skin tone was much darker than his girlfriend's the glow on his cheeks was less noticeable. Fox was equal parts disappointed and glad; she had been to Atlas many times and therefore knew how long it took from seeing Atlas on the skyline to landing on the airstrip. So, from the second they started "Discussing Battle Strategies", she was calling the shots. Fox found her really attractive when she did that, so he wasn't in the mood for arguing on that fact. He was glad about that. He was disappointed they didn't have more time, but they could make that time again later, providing she was cool with it.

Walking out into the open Atlas air was a stark contrast to what it was like on the ship. On the way there the air was warm, now every breath had a chill to it even on a clear morning like today in the midst of summer. Most people who left the ship went straight away to where they needed to go, but Fox and Neo/Cherry waited around for the rush to disperse before they left.

"So, what's the plan Cherry?" he asked, making a point to push the name so that it became natural for him to say it.

' _Straight to my parents' house I think. I wouldn't want to keep them guessing or worrying any longer than they need to. The sooner they know I'm okay, the better._ '

"Whatever you say, Cher. I'll follow wherever you go but be prepared; I may be staring at everything as we're walking."

' _There'll be time for that afterwards, now come on._ ' The pair of them caught a smaller aircraft that would take them to one of the districts in Atlas. Landing here brought back memories for Neo. She caught her first flight from here back when she was younger, they'd taken a small trip to the far side of Atlas to go see a show, and she was honestly more excited about flying there than she was about seeing the show. The entire time she recalled asking "Daddy, when are we going to fly home?" and he would always reply "Not yet, my flower. We must wait until we are done here." The usually confident woman grew steadily more nervous as they got closer and closer to their destination. By the time they were within viewing distance of the house Neo was shaking. He'd noticed that she was before, taking her hand to ease the nerves but now it was beyond what actions could do.

"Neo, what's the matter?" He didn't care about keeping the name act up, not while _she_ needed help and attention, not 'Cherry'.

' _I'm just... scared of what they'll think._ '

"What are you talking about?"

' _I'm dead, by all accounts. If they saw that, believed it and then I show up, they'll have a go at me for putting them through that heartache, at_ _ **best**_ _._ '

"They are your family, they ought to be happy to see you safe and sound."

' _Yeah, but... I... still feel wrong. When they see Cherry, they know that their little girl is safe, knowing full well that I'm underneath all of the make-up and costume but not doing anything to show how happy they are about it because Cherry is a familiar-stranger to them._ '

"Then why don't you give Cherry a break? Be truthful, let them see you, let them know that _you_ are safe, not some character you use to hide yourself."

' _Fox, they haven't seen their daughter in years. She is dead; she died the same time Neo was born._ '

"And Neo 'died' months ago, I know I'd want to see my daughter and know she was safe."

' _I don't want them to see Orchid again!_ ' Her irises blinked from green to white as the name resonated in her mind. She hadn't spoken that name in any real sense for a long time, not in conversation like this at least. Fox pulled her to a little side alleyway as her tears started forming.

"Neo, shh, it's all right." Hs arms wrapped around her and he started rocking side to side, humming a nameless tune to ease her worries.

' _I haven't called myself that in nearly eight years..._ '

"I still think it's a beautiful name to go with a beautiful personality to make you the beautiful person you are." He felt the smile on her face on his chest.

' _Would you stop being so good at making me feel better in a sentence or two? It's like you have a power or something._ '

"Maybe I do, how would you know?" He pushed her away to look into her eyes, which had reverted to Cherry's green eyes again. He took a hold of her dark wig she wore for Cherry and removed it, revealing her natural split hair colours. "I think you should show up as you." Her eyes darted down, avoiding eye contact as best as she could. "They won't hate you Ni. They can't. They're seeing their daughter again." Slowly her eyes drifted back to meet his again, comfort flooding in as she did so.

' _You're... you're right. I should._ ' The green in her eyes faded slowly to give way to pink and brown. Smiling at her boyfriend briefly, she went to grab the bag with Neo's clothes in. ' _Keep an eye out, I don't want people walking down here to see me strutting about half dressed._ '

"Sure." He stood in the alley waiting for her to be done. After 5 minutes, a pair of arms wrapped around his middle from behind.

' _All done now, pretty boy._ '

"Good to hear Ni. Now come on, let's go meet them."

* * *

Next week, we'll get to see what time has done to the Russets. It's so nice to be able to have parts of the story like this that are much slower and feel more natural, rather than the over the top rush of a battle scene or the exposition dumps I know I can rattle off from time to time.

And yes, I did reference them having sex _again._ This is Fox's first relationship, so he's learning about it all, and Neo has her old habits that she is breaking from, but not fully. But expect things like that in the future as well, it's always fun to do that. Especially when you can't write convincing lemons, like me. It seems I'm much more of a lime person.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	38. Back From The Dead

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The house was no different once again. Everything was where she remembered it being. The front gate was large enough to fit a vehicle through with ease, but still quite plain. Once through there and into the front 'garden', if you wanted to call it that, there were a large array of different flower beds and small decorative bushes about. A memory Neo was particularly fond of concerned the third little tree they passed, when she and her brother were running around it chasing one another. It was her turn to be chased and in an attempt to escape him she turned around to run the other way, only for them to collide with each other and lay down clutching their aching heads. It didn't hurt per se, it was much more a shock; and they always laughed about it as they grew up, until Neo couldn't laugh any more. But they still had fond memories.

The sandy gravel path up to the door crunched under foot, small stones shifting at their respective weights. Directly in front of the house was another small flower bed, but this time with much less variation than previous ones. In flower beds they'd passed before, there were plenty of flowers and plants that brought colour and height variety to the border of their small (for Atlas) plot of land. This flower bed lacked that, but that was not a bad thing. In here they were a small bunch of very delicate Buddleia, blooming in a mixture of deep and softer purple. Despite her hair colour, Neo mentioned to Fox how her Mother adored the colour purple. These flowers were hers, she used them as a way of bringing herself peace about her daughter.

The front door was not grand by any stretch of the imagination; it was a very plain door. But that made it stand out amongst a street where ornate decorations were a huge thing. The family itself wasn't very eccentric, and Neo mentioned that her Father constantly had their name to thank for that trait. Neo walked up to it, with Fox having waited a few paces behind, and paused with her hand hovering above the bell to the side. She waited an uncomfortably long time before Fox said anything to her.

"I believe in you Neo." She glanced back and saw the beaming and reassuring smile on his face that made her know he wasn't lying and, on top of that, he meant what he said. With a noticeable breath but still looking at him, she leaned towards the door again and pressed the bell. No turning back now, the deed had been done. Rings could still be heard echoing through the halls as the faintest sound of footsteps were heard in the hallway. The mute woman took a step back from the door and readied herself, calming her nerves with slow and deliberate breaths. There was a rattling of chains on the far side of the door - no one had been outside yet, at least not going out via the front door. When the rattling stopped and the door finally opened, Neo was equal parts shocked, surprised and worried that instead of the expected familiar face of Lang greeting her, it was instead the just-as-familiar but unexpected face of her Dad.

"Hello, how c-" He stopped dead when he saw the person standing at his door, her arms folded behind her back nervously and rocking on her heels, further solidifying that fact. The door edged open slowly as the man comprehended what was in front of him. Neither of them made any attempts to talk to the other, physically or verbally, and Fox remained silent out of politeness - he felt him speaking would ruin the moment. The man shuffled forward, his arm raising up as he got closer to her. His hand floated by her face, scared to touch her in case he was wrong.

"...Orchid?"

By the time he finally spoke, he was too close for Neo to Sign her response, so she instead smiled, fighting back the tears and nodded to him. On cue, his hand finally closed the gap and touched her face. She leaned into the touch and with that everything clicked into place with the man. "My little flower!" He couldn't stop himself, he jumped forward and caught his daughter in a giant hug as he started crying hard onto her shoulder. She followed soon after, her emotions flowing just as hard. A tear fell from Fox's eye at the joyous sight, with more patiently waiting for the opportune moment to make the same journey down his face. "You're home... you're actually home." She forced herself back from his embrace to Sign.

" _I've missed you Dad._ "

"Oh, and I have missed you too Orchid," - " _My little pink flower._ " He hugged her close once again, only noticing Fox when his eyes parted after embracing his daughter for the second time. "I'm sorry! Did you want to see me sir?"

"Actually, I've come with here with your daughter." The student walked up the steps to be on the same level as the other two. He held his own hand out to shake. "Fox Alistair." They shook, Fox felt that his grip was firm yet he still trembled slightly - probably from excitement

"A pleasure to meet you Fox." Without warning, the man caught him in a hug that forced an "Eek!" out of the scarred boy, something that made the petite woman silently giggle. "And thank you, for bringing my little Orchid home to us."

"I..."

' _Accept the responsibility. It was your idea for **me** to be here instead of Cherry._ '

"...I am glad I made you happy sir."

"Oh please, none of the formalities. My name is Oakley, and I'd like you to call me that from now on."

"Sure thing."

"Now both of you, come in. I know that there'll be a few other people in here who will be most pleased to see you Orchid." As her Father briskly walked, nearly jogged, back into the house, Neo looked at her boyfriend who was stood there with a great big smile on his face.

' _You training to be scaffolding now?_ ' Losing him on that one, he looked at her hoping that there was more to it than that. ' _Then what's with the beam?_ ' The grin came back in full force as he realised the joke.

"Not bad, but you may need to see Yang to improve your pun game when we get back." He moved closer, hugging her shoulder. "But I'm smiling because I knew that you being here would make them happy - and they are. I mean, look at your Dad. Speaking of, let's not keep him waiting."

' _I mean, he can wait one more minute whilst I do something very important._ ' She turned her body to fully face him, her eyes staring straight at his lips. With the unspoken message received and understood, Fox leaned down to kiss her as she raised herself on her toes to meet him in the middle. They maintained contact for a fair few seconds, many words, thoughts and feelings being sent through the contact. But even after all that, Neo still felt that there was something left unsaid.

' _I love you Fox. For bringing me home._ '

"I love you too Neo. And I'm happy you are home. Now, let's go meet the family, shall we?"

* * *

The hallway wasn't too special, but at least there was space for a couple of decent sized bags to be kept without worry of getting the way. By the side of the door was an umbrella rack, the same place where - providing they hadn't changed it since she had left home - would be the first place she picked up her soon to be weapon of choice. She placed her current weapon in there like it was second nature for her. There was a mirror on the wall on the left and the stairs to the first floor were on the right of the entrance. Hanging on the wall above a little mantelpiece by the mirror were a group of photos. One showed Neo's Father and her brother as he was graduating from Atlas Academy, another showed a much younger version of him and his wife hugging in the sun - clearly that photo was not taken in Atlas based off their attire, a third showed another man holding hands with a young pink haired child that Fox didn't recognise immediately, but after looking at the final photo he realised that it was Orchid. The final photo was a classic family photo; the five of them were grouped together against a very formal and professional backdrop, Orchid at the front as she was smallest, then her Mother, then Vinnie, her Father and finally the other man - who Fox had deduced was her Uncle Lang.

' _I was no older than 13 at the time,_ ' she reminisced, touching the frame and being reminded of the time it was taken. ' _My brother was accepted into the Huntsman programme a few days before, so Mom made a decision that we should get a family photo done - it was the last time we ever did._ ' The sadness could be heard in her inner voice as she brushed the frame once again. ' _We weren't a bad family. Bad things just happened to us so frequently it wasn't even funny anymore._ '

"Don't be so down on yourselves. Lots of people only remember the amazingly good things and the tiniest bad things. Sometimes you've got to remember the smaller victories as well." He continued to walk down the hall where her Father had gone as she remained where she was for a moment longer, still looking at her own face in the photo. It was younger, obviously, and full of so much more life than she showed a lot of the time. Promising herself that she'd get back to that, she walked further into the house, her old home, to where her Father and Fox had entered.

"This is Fox Alistair," she heard her Dad saying as she approached, "and he has done something marvellous today Yubae." Hearing the name of her Mom being spoken made her even more anxious to enter than she had been outside, however that was possible.

"Please sir, I did nothing. And I don't want to ruin the surprise for you, so I'll let _them_ do the 'talking' from here on out." - ' _The stage is yours Neo._ ' Slowly, she eased her way around the corner and pushed her way into the room. Oakley stood there with a proud grin on his face, saying, "I cannot believe my daughter is home!" with just the expression, though even if asked he would say to them what he hoped would be conveyed on his face.

Yubae, for that was her Mother's name, brought her hand up to her mouth as her eyes shot wide open. She was smaller than her husband, but not by much. Her hair was a much more radiant pink than Neo's, either because of the pink was solely in her genes and not completely so in Neo's. Also, Neo has _heterochromia borealis_ which also affects her hair colour, most likely making it naturally paler all over and even gave her hair a few light-coloured streaks. Yubae's eyes matched her irises. Looking between her and her husband, Fox could clearly see where Neo's distinct colour palette came from.

"Is that... our little Orchid?" the woman managed through growing tears.

" _Hi Mom,_ " was all she got out before the older woman got up and threw her arms around the girl she knew was her daughter.

"Oh Orchid, I never thought I was going to see you again. You, as in _you_ you, not Cherry or whatever name you gave-"

"Yubae, I think she understands what you meant."

"Sorry hunny, I just..." she pushed herself back to look at her daughter again, now no longer the teenager she was when she left but a woman in her own right. "I'm so happy to see you again."

" _Me too. But I wouldn't have done this without Fox's help._ " Both Russets looked at the copper haired boy standing near the door, small and curious smiles on their faces.

"And what are you to our daughter Fox, to help her with this?"

"Um..." As friendly as they attempted to sound, the question came off as incredibly to the point and threatening as a result - they're Neo's parents alright.

' _Not yet pretty boy, we've got to meet the others first._ ' - " _Where's Vinnie and Uncle Lang? I want Fox to meet them first before we spill the life story._ " A pair of pink and a pair of brown eyes widened at the question; they knew it was coming but they still weren't prepared for it.

"They're otherwise occupied. Your brother Vinnie was on a mission with the Academy and Lang is heading out to get him."

" _Hmm... 8/10, very convincing. But all the Academies are off on a break at the moment and the car is still on the driveway. Plus, Fox here is a Huntsman-in-Training._ "

"That's nice and all, but why are you-"

" _His semblance allows him to see the Aura of people around him, even through walls and ceilings and the like._ "

' _Neo, it can't do that._ '

' _Shut up and roll with me on this one._ ' - " _So, if I asked, he could check and see whether or not their Auras were floating around here._ "

"Young lady," her Father spoke, slipping right back into the role of parent to a daughter with ease "you have just arrived in this house, I do _not_ expect you to be threatening us like this."

" _It's not a threat, Dad. I'm just saying that I can get Fox to check if you're lying about them being here or not._ " The confident façade Oakley had put on with his last sentence was already gone. That worried Neo more than anything else before, her Father was a strong man who wouldn't back down so easily. Even when he felt responsible for her loss of voice he stood up and essentially declared his guilt rather than run away and pretend he had nothing to do with it. ' _That's not like him. Fox, say something. Anything that'll help._ '

"Oakley, there must be something the matter. Neo told me you before today and she said that you were always so sure of everything you said and did. That honestly didn't look sure. Believe me, I've seen that before; one of my teammates was so shy when we first met her but over time she grew and became as comfortable with us as she did her own family. However, when that shyness rears its head again we know something is off before words even leave her mouth. So please Oakley, or Yubae; tell us. Ne- Orchid is your daughter, she ought to know. We're here to help if you need." The adults looked at each other. They held each other's hands, gave each other an approving look then turned to their daughter and her friend.

"Vinnie's home." Yubae found it hard to talk about it, her words feeling very forced in her throat. "As is Lang. That said, he's... feeling very low. We've kept him in bed against his near pleas to be up and about helping but we have refused. That doesn't mean it is great, it simply means it's not terrible. They're upstairs, I'm sure your friend will be able to tell you where they are." Said friend's dark copper eyes shot the mute a look that she simply shrugged at.

"Thank you," he said, turning to leave with Neo. She wasted no time, grabbing him by the hand and essentially dragging him up the stairs to find them, a gesture he's sure he heard her parents discussing as they left earshot. A few coughs from behind the closed door of one of the rooms gave the petite woman a pretty solid idea of where they were without needing to ask her boyfriend to look for them. She knocked a couple of times to get the attention of the two in there.

"Come in, it's open." The voice behind the door was strong and confident, it was the voice of an Atlas student for sure. The couple walked into the room to see Vinnie sitting in an armchair by a bedside whilst Lang lay in bed resting. When his eyes saw his sister for the first time in nearly 9 years he had a hard time processing what he saw. Eventually he could form words once again to express his feelings. "Well I'll be damned, you're home. Actually you this time." He looked at Fox, greeting him properly. "Vinnie, Orchid's sister. And you are?"

"Fox Alistair, Orchid's friend from Vale."

"Vale; so that's where you've been all this time. I was unsure if you were there or if you'd returned to Mistral like 'your close friend Cherry' said you might do." Neo's head cocked slightly to the left.

" _Wait, so none of you know anything about what happened in and around Vale over the past months?_ "

"...Should we have listened? Is something coming?" he questioned, his hands growing damper as they started to sweat.

" _Nothing we don't know of, so you're all fine It just means that Fox and I have a lot of storytelling to do when everyone's together._ " Her attention hopped from her brother to the figure in the bed. " _Speaking of which..._ " She walked over to the bed to get a better look at the occupant of it. There in the bed lay Lang, the family butler that was treated so normally that he acted, and essentially was, another member of the family. His hair, once luscious and raven in colour, started greying and thinning down by the time she had left back then. Now, having not seen him for such a long time, she realised just how grey and rundown he had become in her absence. There was barely any way to recognise his former hair colour without prior knowledge of it and his face now sported a messy and unkempt beard, yet even through the facial hair she could tell his face was much thinner, like he hadn't been eating. She rested her small hand on his shoulder in an attempt to start shaking him slightly to gain his attention, but his hand shot there the second hers made contact shocking the young woman.

"Is that my little flower Orchid?" He spoke with quite a hushed but hoarse voice, like he hadn't used it in a while and speaking was a struggle, but the genuine curiosity and excitement could be heard anyway. Nodding, she pried her hand from under his to talk to him.

" _It is Uncle Lang. I'm home for now. I came to see you all again._ " The man sat up in bed and smiled at her, holding his hand out for her to take which she did.

"I am so happy to see you again Orchid. I have missed you so, more than I dare to admit sometimes. But you are home now and I couldn't ask for more." The pleasant atmosphere was broken by the butler's sudden bout of coughing. Both Fox and Neo looked at him with a twinge of panic, that didn't sound remotely healthy.

"Rest Lang, just rest. Orchid will be back soon, you need to rest." Vinnie jumped in to stop the pair expressing their concerns at this moment.

"But Orchid is here Vinnie, I would like to speak with her."

"She will be speaking to you later, do not fear. For now, have some medicine and rest; she will speak to you again." The grey-haired man looked at the girl in front of him.

"Do you promise me Orchid, that you will definitely come to speak to me?"

" _Of course Lang. I have a lot to talk to you about and, whilst I'd prefer to tell everybody at once, if I get some time to spend with you then I don't mind telling it a second time._ " Her grin was punctuated by a single tear falling from her brown eye. Lang reached out and wiped the tear away.

"Now, now. No tears my little flower. Today is a happy day. It-" another coughing fit cut the happy moment with a knife. Neo lowered Lang back down to laying position to give him some time to rest.

" _Later Uncle Lang. I promise._ " She kissed the tips of her fingers and placed them on his forehead, wincing ever so slightly at how warm he felt, then left the room with Fox and Vinnie. Shutting the door once they'd passed through, she quickly asked her brother about his condition.

"He's been very steadily been getting better, and I mean _very_ steadily. He's had this for nearly a month now with very little signs of fast improvement. It's just... it's shit, I know. But Mom has told me plenty of times that Lang is a strong person even after you left, he didn't let it get him down. This is a cough, he is going to make it through this." With a smile of understanding, the trio walked back downstairs to the kitchen where Yubae and Oakley still waited.

"How's Lang fairing Vin?" his Mother asked. With a small sigh, he answered.

"Not great Mom. He's making minute progress, but I can't give it any more than that."

"That's okay sweetie, we'll push on through. Lang is part of the family, we treat him as such and so we shall look after him like he is part of the family." It was clear to all that she wasn't 100% convinced about her own words, but she said them with conviction regardless.

"Now," Oakley said breaking the silence that began to fall on the room, "I don't believe Orchid came here to stand around looking miserable. She and Fox must have quite a few stories to tell. This _is_ the first time she has brought someone home to see us."

" _Dad!_ " she signed, her embarrassment coming through in how she glared at him. The man simply laughed, then gestured towards an adjacent room.

"Come, let's sit and talk. Would either of you two like a drink of any kind?"

"No thank you."  
" _I'm fine Dad._ "

"Suit yourselves. Get seated, I'll make some drinks for the rest of us." He went to the kettle to boil the water whilst the remaining four people wondered into the living room. Fox looked around upon entering and saw that it kept a very similar style to the rest of the house he'd seen - very plain in design with muted but still fairly strong colours ever present. In the room, there was a triple seat sofa and two single seat chairs as well, along with a few coffee tables around as well. They were made of leather, but not the white leather he hadn't realised he'd been expecting to see. Instead they were a nice healthy brown colour, mixing in with the complete contrast of this family's break from the stereotype that is an Atlas family. Yubae and Vinnie sat on either ends of the triple seat whilst Neo sat in one of the chairs and Fox stood behind it. After a couple of minutes, Oakley joined them carrying three cups of warm drink on a tray.

" _You look so much like a typical butler Dad._ "

"Well Orchid, with Lang out of commission the way he is we each picked up a large portion of what he used to do. I've become quite good with balancing lots of things on a tray like this." He smiled at his daughter, knowing that she always looked up to their butler as an Uncle, seeing him and being with him more than she was with either him or his wife because of their jobs and other commitments when she was still at home. "But enough about me, tell us about you Orchid. There must be some fairly exciting news if you- if your friend Cherry - hadn't contacted us in over two months." Setting the tray down on the floor as he took his seat, Oakley held his own warm cup in his hands looking at his daughter in anticipation of her stories.

" _Well... there are a fair few since the last time Cherry came here. Not all of which are great... Interesting, sure. But not great._ "

"If they are interesting, then I look forward to hearing about them" Vinnie commented.

"Where would you like to start Orchid?"

* * *

As nice as I know Neo would want to be with her family (it'd been 9 years almost since she disappeared as Orchid), I still thought that in these moments she'd let a bit of her life as Neo slip in in order to get what she wanted. I'm pretty sure she knows not to abuse that sort of anonymity with Fox against her family, because sooner or later they won't be strangers anymore (spoilers, I guess?)

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	39. Long Overdue Catch Up

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

" _I might as well start from the beginning, everything kind of falls into place from there._ " The mute gave a quick glance at her boyfriend who smiled and nodded at her.

' _Go for it Ni. They might as well know everything._ '

' _Absolutely everything?_ ' she teased, smiling externally.

' _You know what I meant, you filthy minded individual._ '

' _Yeah, I did. I'm_ _ **not**_ _telling them about that._ ' - " _When I first got to Vale a while ago, I told you about my friend Roman, didn't I?_ "

"I remember you talking about him, and I said he was trouble based on what we'd seen and heard about him." Both parties had promptly dropped the idea that Neo/Orchid and Cherry were two separate people, but rather were one and the same, even though all the stories that were being told were told _about_ Neo _by_ Cherry like she was some sort of owl passing notes between the two. Yubae stood firm with her decision and comment.

" _Well, you were right. I always mentioned what we did, but never what he was like at other times. He wasn't physically abusive - he couldn't be because I'd break his fingers, at least - but that didn't stop him from humiliating me at any opportunity he got._ " The pink haired woman was clearly in two minds about how to feel; that 'I told you so' feeling lasted about as long as she could go without breathing before she realised that her daughter had just admitted to being emotionally abused by someone who she had mentioned she enjoyed being around. " _But anyway, there was a job that he was tipped off about, so_ _ **his**_ _boss came to him to get him involved. It was clear that her inviting me was done more out of a need to bring me along rather than a genuine want to do so. We found out from his boss that_ _ **her**_ _boss needed the item that we were going to steal for her schemes; The Parchment of Volentes._ " The two adults gasped, knowing of the Parchment from their own lines of work.

"Orchid, what did you do with that thing? Where is it?" Oakley spoke with both concern and worry; concerned for his daughter's safety, worried for what her answer might be. "Has the wish been made? Who wished for it, we need to know Orc-"

"Oakley dear, you're rambling."

"Sorry..."

" _I plan to explain it all, don't worry. You still following Vin?_ " Her elder brother gave a shrug with a bob of the head.

"I guess I am, just don't over complicate things or say lots that I have no clue what you're on about."

" _Aww, it's okay Vinnie. I won't go too fast so your ickle biddy brain can process the small bits of information I give you._ " The boy's face dropped to an expression of complete disinterest.

"Still 40 months older than you."

" _Can still kick your ass into next week._ "

"Children, that's enough." Their Father brought them back to the conversation at hand. "So... you saw the Parchment?"

" _Kind of... look, I've still got a little more to explain, can I do that first?_ " She was given the go-ahead. " _The plan was for the boss, a woman named Cinder Fall, to touch the Parchment and gain her wish. But there was a team of Huntsmen and Huntresses-in-Training that tried to stop us._ " She looked at Fox, who stood there as a small grin ghosted his way onto his face. " _And that team was Team CFVY of Beacon, one member being Mr. Fox Alistair here._ " The scarred boy waved, providing an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at bringing the lighter side of the conversation forward considering he knew how the story went and that it wasn't exactly material you'd want to be sharing to your parents, especially adding to the fact that it was from one of their family's own perspectives.

"What did you do Orchid?"

" _I didn't follow the agenda. The plan, as I said, was to get Cinder to touch the artefact and then escape. I didn't do that; I went after it myself._ _ **I**_ _touched the Parchment... and Fox did as well._ " The room fell silent after the gasp that came for far too long.

"Mom, what so significant about-"

"The Parchment of Volentes is essentially a Genie in a Bottle. The person who touches it is judged by the Spirit within its words. If deemed worthy, that person can make the wish of their dreams. Otherwise they..." the words never came, which put Vinnie on edge even more.

"'Otherwise they' what?"

"They die, Vinnie." Fox spoke for the first time since the conversation started, but it was clear to him that beating around the bush would get them nowhere fast, and they had a lot of ground to cover. "Their body is disintegrated and the Parchment itself vanishes from existence for a century or so. It's so the person who made the wish couldn't be resurrected soon enough to get another wish from it."

" _One thing they_ _ **don't**_ _mention however is what happens when two people touch it together. From experiences of pain before, I can say that there is no pain like it. And after that pain came... death. And I meant that in the most literal way. Mom, Dad, Vinnie: I died. As proof, I have a copy of the paperwork that officially marks my death._ " She picked a file from her Scroll that when her family read it saw that it was indeed an official document from the staff at the Vale General Hospital declaring 'Neo' dead.

"You're officially dead?" Vinnie asked, trying to clarify everything in his own mind. Neo confirmed his question. "That's... neat, I guess... Neo." He small smirk grew on his face at the revelation that _that_ was the name she had given herself; even as an adult he wasn't above a little bit of big sibling teasing.

"Vinnie, not the time..." The Atlas Graduate got a look from his Father that immediately stopped him from continuing. That, and the daggers that were being stared at him by both his sister and her friend.

" _From that incident came a whole bunch of things. For starters, due to reasons unexplainable by even our own resident coffee-fuelled madman of a Professor, Doctor Oobleck, Fox and I can talk to each other in our heads._ "

"Okay, I take back my previous comment; _that_ is neat!"

"Vinnie, I said that now-"

"Actually Oakley, that is rather interesting."

"Yubae..." he almost whined, confused as to why his wife was taking their son's side.

"Tell me Fox," the woman continued, her pink eyes staring at the boy, "what does my daughter sound like to you?"

"I'm not sure how to explain it." The second those words left his mouth, he realised that they were to be false in the imminent future as all four other pairs of eyes in the room stared at him basically demanding him to explain. "That's to say... I couldn't before. But now, I'd say it's... a lot like yours Yubae. It was soft and comforting, but could very easily turn on a dime and drag you kicking and screaming away to your doom - the unpredictability of the person coming forth in the voice is astounding, especially considering that was all I had to go on for months." The Russets all glanced between each other, then their daughter, then Fox, then back at their daughter. Neo just stared wide eyed at Fox, then when she glimpsed her family looking at her she decided to acknowledge the corner of the room's presence with her gaze. "Ooh... I kinda jumped the gun there, didn't I?"

' _Just a smidge, you idiot._ '

"It was an honest mistake!"

' _Oh right, should have seen_ _ **that**_ _excuse coming..._ ' she couldn't keep a straight face as a playful smirk grew.

"Sight jokes? Now? _Really?_ "

"Sorry if we're intruding on something," Oakley said in a manner that was anything but sorry, "but now that you have proven to us that you can indeed communicate telepathically, would you mind telling us what exactly you meant by 'all you had to go on'."

"Okay. So, from birth I was blind. Near complete blindness - anything a hand's width away was in indistinguishable blur. I could tell you what was light and what wasn't, and I'd only know what things looked like if they were right in front of my face, but even then, I'd have a tough time doing so. There was a long stint of time where your daughter grew interested in me and I was completely oblivious, because I couldn't see the signs - and I say that in the most literal of senses. This was after we were both told by the Headmaster, Professor Ozpin, that we needed to do things together to keep the Parchment... um... satisfied?" The uncertainty in which he spoke didn't calm the nerves of the others present. "Before you hang, draw and quarter me, let me explain further; the Parchment is meant to be a single item, but us both touching it at the same time made it need to split itself in half as clearly it deemed us both worthy to do so. But that was never meant to happen, it's only ever supposed to be a single item. So, it kind of... forced us to be together on two separate occasions."

" _He's right; two times where there were basically no controls on our bodies and we threw ourselves at each other for a minute before reality kicked in._ "

"It was weird..."

"Not as weird as being told a story of your sister having her 'instincts removed and her throwing herself onto someone because a mystical item made them do it'. I'm going to have nightmares for weeks." Vinnie shuddered, then took a sip from his cup, the drink inside on the edge of 'too cold to be enjoyable any more'.

" _Anyway..._ after that we actually did start hanging out a little more and trying things that may stop it from doing that to us." Neo finished the sentence for him, deeming the inevitable revealing of this information coming from Fox to be a poor choice on their part, but coming for her... a less poor choice.

" _We got close, we grew feelings for one another, and we've been dating for a little while now because of it._ " She finally thought now was the right time to do this; she reached back and placed her hand on the chair and Fox, who saw what she was doing, moved his hands to rest on top of hers. Oakley and Yubae couldn't keep up their serious acts anymore, they broke the second they watched how honest they looked together.

"Orchid, that's wonderful!" her Father exclaimed.

"We are both so proud of you!" her Mother added with a large hug of her daughter, something she really wasn't expecting at all. "It's been so long we've waited for you to bring someone home. It doesn't feel like a home until that happens in your life, I think." Neo started blushing, unsure of what to feel but feeling like 'Embarrassed' was as good a place to start as any. "Sorry dear, have I stopped your flow?" There was a slight shrug from her daughter. "Oh sorry, please go on Orchid." Her Mother sat back down, hers and Oakley's hands meeting with a proud look on both of their faces.

" _So, after we started dating we both thought I'd still be a good idea to stay close to one another to keep the urges at bay, which we did. After we helped one of his teammates defend his home village from a giant Grimm - we'll explain later - and I helped make a dress for another one, we were there falling asleep and I mentioned to Fox how I wished he could have seen how happy everyone looked at the dress. The Parchment, obviously only being there to grant one person's wish, needed both parts to be near each other and for both parties to want the same thing for the wish to work. Deep down, Fox mentioned that there's always a part of anyone who is handicapped in some way, be them blind, deaf or mute who wants to be normal, wants what everyone else has. Me saying, or rather me_ _ **thinking**_ _the wish was all it needed. We woke up the next morning and it had been granted._ "

"And do you want to know the first thing I saw when I woke up? Other than my own hands, the very first thing I noticed was your daughter's eyes. They shone in the morning light and I remember saying how beautiful they were. Even only having sight for less than a week, I have still yet to find anything natural or otherwise that could make me retract my statement of them being the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"Wow... that's... just, wow... I'm at a loss for words Fox. That's a lot to take in all at once..." Neo's older brother was evidently still trying to process everything even now.

' _Maybe we over did it a bit?_ ' the boy asked.

' _Nah._ ' - " _Perhaps a little_ " she signed, trying to lessen the blow for him. " _There's a few more stories we've got to share, but - if it's okay with you - we'd like to stay for a couple of days; Fox has never been to Atlas before so I wanted to show him round, get him to meet you, etc. Plus, I'd be a nice change of pace from the usual dump of stories in an hour or two then disappearing for months at a time we've gotten used to._ "

"Sweetie of course it's okay for you two to stay here. Use your old room, we haven't touched a lot in there but we have redecorated it so there may be a few odd things missing."

"Thanks Dad." She glanced round at her blood family and smiled. "I love you all." Jumping towards them, she hugged the one in the middle with the outer two wrapping around th pair of them. Her Mother echoed the statement.

"And we all love you back Orchid. Truly. And we're so happy to have you home."

* * *

Fox was the first to the door to Neo's old bedroom. A twinge of jealousy came across him when he opened it saw the size of the room, even though this was a modest (for Atlas) sized house with modest (again, for Atlas) sized rooms. He shut his eyes and burst his Aura out, reading the room. Whilst the new, 'bog-standard' sight was good and all, nothing beats the classic, his 'special sight'. The burst wasn't going to make it throughout the entire room, so he would have activated his semblance to give him some more range on his ability; that wouldn't be necessary now, the comparison had already been made. The fact the room _needed_ him to tap into his semblance to view it all like that was all the evidence - that and his actual sight - he needed to conclude, this place was bigger than his ever was.

' _Fox, I know that if becoming a Huntsman fails, you wanted to change careers and become a door, I respect your choices but can you please wait until_ _ **after**_ _I'm inside before following your dreams?_ ' Dark copper eyes turned to see Neo with her hands on her hips waiting impatiently to get into the room. Smirking, he turned back to face into the room as he said,

"Y'know, just for that, I think I might as well just take my- aah!" The ironic thing was, when Neo swept him off his feet, he was left hanging on to her carrying him bridal style through the doorway. Putting on an act, Fox continued. "Thank you hun. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't there to sweep me off my feet every-" he was suddenly and unceremoniously dropped on the floor "...day." The look he gave her was not one of satisfaction, if anything it leaned much more towards betrayal. She noticed, then smirked just as he did not a minute before.

' _I'm sorry, did you say something?_ '

"I was trying to be nice, you _did_ essentially just carry me over the threshold into your old room." The moment he mentioned that, the mute's miscoloured eyes opened as wide as they could go and her cheeks started flushing red as the fact she had just done that dawned on her. She spun around very quickly and hid her face from him, trying her best to hide her embarrassment. "Just teasing you Ni. Though to be fair, you were the one who initially brought up the idea of them being future In-Laws for me."

' _I... yeah, I guess I was, wasn't I?_ ' The way Fox's expression changed from one of amusement to one of triumph showed that he'd won that little conversation. ' _But it feels right though._ ' The triumphant look faded quickly and was replaced with confusion now. ' _Have you ever had an idea or wanted something that you thought was a good idea at first, but then as time moved on you realised "Hmm... maybe not"? But then there are the times that things just fall into place and you know that it's right. This was one of those. Sure, I was nervous about seeing my family again, but none of those nerves had anything to do with you meeting them. Honestly, it felt like you'd already met them, despite only knowing about them for a few days. Marrying you wouldn't feel wrong, doesn't feel wrong. I know you've said that if that happens it's a long way off from now, but I'd be willing to wait._ ' Neo was surprised when Fox brought her into a warm and loving embrace after that, she only realised she hadn't been looking at him for most of that when the hug came out of nowhere for her.

"See, I think I'm rubbing off on you a bit."

' _Well..._ ' the got a gentle flick on the forehead.

"No. Trying to be serious here." She apologised and let him start again. "The way you convinced me just then that it would be all good if we got married in the future. I'm fully onboard with it. I'll admit, I never thought I'd find someone like you or even remotely close to you. But now I have, I don't want to lose it. 'Soul mates by technicality.' Remember that?"

' _How could I forget? Coco teased me something rotten when she found out that little trinket of information._ '

"Oh really? How could _she_ tease _you?_ You're normally the one doing the teasing."

' _When I was Velvs' "study buddy", we talked about you a fair bit._ ' They broke the hug to go and sit down on the bed. It hadn't changed since she last slept in it all those years ago; the mattress had probably been changed in that time, it was a little softer and bouncier than she remembered it being. ' _Nothing bad though. I mentioned even then that I thought you were... kind of... cute._ ' He let out a little chuckle, the confession not fazing him. That was a relief. ' _Apparently, according to the others, I couldn't take my eyes from you at times, though I don't ever remember those times. You wouldn't stop reading that book and you were so engrossed in it that you clearly didn't notice either._ ' A smile ghosted its way onto her lips as she recounted the events. ' _In those moments with the book, you were so concentrated and yet so relaxed at the same time. I'd done my absolute best to block my thoughts from your mind, but you had done no such thing for me, mostly because I was trying and you probably thought I'd disappeared from your life, right?_ '

"Yeah... I was a bit harsh and blunt with people. You remedied that as well."

' _But yeah, I heard you reading the book. Every character you gave a new voice, every time they spoke I knew who was speaking. Though you were reading very slow._ '

"Force of habit with books like that; I was always taught to either read it slow or reading it twice, just to make sure I was getting it right. It was a-"

' _A way of training the mind to get used to the feel of each letter and word, I know. Remember, I learnt to read braille in a day and a half to get you back for choosing the book over me._ ' Fox genuinely gasped at that.

"Wait! So, you didn't know braille beforehand?"

' _Didn't even know what it was before then to be perfectly honest._ '

"And you taught yourself how to read it?"

' _Uh huh._ '

"In little over a _day?_ "

' _Well, less actually. I also had to make my disguise for Bubblegum at the same time._ ' Fox couldn't help himself for sitting there with his jaw agape.

"Dust, have I told you I love you?" he whispered after a long stint of silence.

' _Not today you haven't. I'm hurt by that_ ' she said, playing with him a little and very clearly not meaning it.

"Well I do. I love you so much Neo. You learnt braille to get back at me for something that, to me at least, was fairly small and insignificant - clearly not to you else you wouldn't have done it. You are just... remarkable is all I can think of right now, but you deserve much better praise than that." She leaned in and planted a kiss on his lips, one he happily reciprocated.

' _Remarkable will do, you sap_ ' she said, still during the kiss. Once they broke, Fox replied.

"But I still think you deserve more than that." She ruffled his messy copper hair with a grin.

' _You always say such the nicest things. Now come on, let's actually get our stuff in the room, rather than leaving it out in the hall._ ' When they got there, Vinnie was walking up to them. " _Hey, Vin. What's wrong?_ "

"Why must something be wrong? No, I just wanted to speak to Fox."

"Sure. What about?"

"Nothing much, I was just curious about your fighting style. I was wondering if we could have a friendly sparring match." Fox quickly glanced over at Neo, whose face was plastered with a smile.

"Going off your sister's grin, I assume there's no ulterior motive behind that request?"

"Well, maybe a small one. Nothing bad, I promise." The scarred boy folded his arms in front of him, showing his uncertainty at the situation but not opposed to hearing it out. "I'm a fair bit older than you, judging by the fact you mentioned Professor Ozpin I'd be correct in assuming you're currently at Beacon Academy?"

"Yeah. Me and my team are finishing our second year come the summer." - ' _Didn't jump the gun that time_ ' he mentioned to Neo like it was some sort of an achievement.

' _There's still time for you to fuck it up though._ '

' _Have faith, Small-but-Deadly One_ '

"I see," Vinnie continued, not having been privy to the pair's inner dialogue "well, I graduated a fair few years ago but even when I was at Atlas my team never got to participate in either the 35th or the 36th Vytal Tournament. As such, I've never actually fought against a student from another school, former or otherwise."

"I've got you beat there, buddy" the Beacon student replied, uncrossing his arms as he became far more relaxed and at ease with their conversation "my team sailed through the first two rounds of the 40th with ease. Didn't you watch this year's Tournament?"

"You can't exactly watch something when you're on a search and destroy mission with a bunch of others in the far North of Atlas, a place so away from everyone that we physically couldn't contact anyone past a certain point on our journey." Fox felt a little uneasy hearing that, feeling like he'd hit a nerve. Even Neo looked a little shaken at how her brother responded.

"I'm... I'm sorry for saying anything..."

"It's fine, nothing to worry about. I mean, I'm still here, it's all good. No, I only saw the result. And before you ask, I had no idea about her either. Her being an android was a top secret, so much so that I'm pretty sure only her creators and herself knew of the fact." None of them knew about Ruby's knowledge of the fact. "But we digress; I'd like to see how you fight, and I'd like to get the chance to finally face another student that wasn't from Atlas Academy. It'd be a nice change of pace."

"Sure, I'm up for that." Vinnie's expression improved upon hearing that.

"Awesome. The back yard ought to be large enough - you don't use bullets, do you?"

"Well, I've been thinking about getting another upgrade soon to include it, but no I don't as of yet. Being blind kind of makes shooting people hard" he joked.

"Right, what was I thinking?"

"Vinnie, you've know-"

"Vin," he interrupted "please. I trust you, you and Orchid are going to be a great couple. I can tell. From that alone, you've earned the right to call me Vin."

"Thank you. So, Vin, you've known me less than an hour, and I'd dropped the 'I was blind once' bomb fifteen minutes ago, at best. I don't care if you forget something like that; you have a reason, and a valid one at that."

"Thank you, Fox. I appreciate it. So, shall we say 5 minutes? Gives you a bit of time to get your things into your room for your stay before we spar." Fox looked pleased with himself somewhat, he felt that he'd clearly made a good impression and now was a chance to prove himself further, against a fully trained Huntsman no doubt. He extended out his hand for the eldest Russet child, if you could call a man in his late-20's a child, to shake and he did so. Neither tried to pull the power move of squeezing the other's hand tighter and Fox respected that from him.

"I think I'm going to enjoy this." They broke with a smile on each of their faces as they turned and went their own ways to prepare.

"By the way, Orc" Vinnie called over his shoulder, continuing towards his own room on the other side of the house, "I'm sure Lang would like to hear your stories too. Maybe you could do that whilst your boyfriend and I have our little match, save you picking favourites." The young man slowed down to a near standstill and turned to see his sister, just in case she wanted to say something.

" _Okay, if that's what you want. But I bet you don't want me there because you'd get annoyed when I wouldn't cheer for you._ " Vinnie stopped walking altogether for just a moment, clearly processing her comment, before muttering something along the lines of "Not dignifying that..." before replying with a much louder answer.

"No, Lang actually wants to see you and talk to you. I thought then would have been the perfect time to do it, and Fox can join you if I wipe the floor with him too quickly."

"Don't start trash talking unless you're going to follow it up."

"Remember, schoolboy, I am your senior in age and-"

"And nothing else, Vin." That last word mocked the trust that he had been given not a few moments ago. The young man in question narrowed his eyes and walked away without another word.

"Well, I think I won that one."

' _The morale victory is yours, Fox; he only goes quiet like that when he's lost the battle._ '

"Let's see if I can win the war as well then." He went quickly back into her room to ready himself.

* * *

Bit of a recap chapter at the start, I know. But if you've not seen your parents for as long as Neo has, and with all the information she was dropping on them, it wasn't going to be a quick conversation by any means.

Now, to quote Elvis Presley, next week's going to be "A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action"

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	40. Last

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Lang, Orchid is going to be in here with you, alright?" The butler nodded as Yubae moved out of the doorway to let Neo through, who didn't miss the opportunity to hug her Mother on the way in, surprising the woman.

" _Make sure they don't kill themselves please Mom._ " Pure pink eyes looked into the eyes of her daughter and saw how much she had missed them. The Heterochromia pink and brown of a young girl she still loved with all her heart, even after years of not seeing her. Even though she had seen her, it was never _her_ , just a fake persona of someone who bared an uncanny resemblance to her daughter but "wasn't her". She saw how her little flower cared for her boyfriend, and how much she clearly missed her family, so all Yubae could do was smile at the request.

"Of course, sweetheart. I know how much Fox means to you, I'll make sure he's safe."

" _Vinnie too Mom. I love our family -_ _ **all**_ _of it - I'd like to keep it if I could._ " A brief wave of uncertainty flooded Yubae's thoughts, but she didn't let it show. Instead, her smile grew and she booped her daughter on the nose.

"I know, flower, I know. Now go on." Neo grinned as she walked into the room up to the chair by her honorary Uncle's bedside. Shutting the door, Yubae's smile faded the second it clicked shut. Turning around, she saw her husband Oakley downstairs waiting for her. "Do you think she should be told yet?" she asked, speaking in a far more sombre tone than she was when she was just talking in the doorway.

"I am... unsure if that's the best decision right now." As Yubae descended the stairs, Oakley's hands found their ways to his pockets. "Our Orchid is a smart girl, she always has been and I'm sure that she could figure it out. But at the same time, I feel we'll _need_ to tell her before she leaves. It's not something I'd want kept from me, it's certainly not something Orchid would want kept from her especially considering it is Lang."

"I agree, she saw him as an Uncle. Heck, she still does. But breaking it to her is going to be one of the hardest things we've ever done." She wrapped her arms around his middle for a reassuring hug, and he removed his hands for his pocket to hug her back.

"Not going to deny that fact." Placing a quick kiss on her forehead, the couple remained there for a moment, letting the time pass as they individually thought of what to do with regards to the situation at hand. Admittedly, they both were coming up with very few ideas of merit. "Come now, we can think about this later. For now, let's make sure the boys don't destroy anything out back, especially themselves." He let go with one arm as he started walking down the hall to the back door, one of his arms still over her shoulder whilst one of her arms remained round his middle.

* * *

" _I've missed you Uncle Lang_ " Neo started. " _I'm aware that I said that earlier as well, but I mean it. I missed you nearly every single day I've been gone, and even when 'I' came back here, I couldn't see you to say it properly._ " Internally Neo was cursing herself for not coming back sooner, and unbeknownst to her that was manifesting externally as well. She only realised when Lang took hold of her hands and started speaking to her.

"My little flower, I know you feel bad for not having seen me in such a long time. It has been tough for me too. But now we have some time and I am certain that you have a fair number of exciting stories to tell me, all of which I look forward to hearing about." A few short, but still unhealthy sounding, coughs later, Lang sat up a bit more in his bed and eased himself into a comfortable sitting position. "So, tell me, who was that boy you brought in here with you earlier?"

" _His name is Fox, Fox Alistair._ "

"Ah, a powerful surname; 'Defender of man', if my fading memory serves me right." He laughed at his own little joke, before his coughs broke his merriment. "And, is he one of your friends from before? I don't recall..."

" _No Uncle Lang, he isn't. Those people, I wouldn't even call them friends anymore. Nothing close. They are people I had the misfortune of knowing for too long. No, Fox has been a closer and better friend in months than they had been in years. He's my boyfriend too._ " Lang's piercing orange eyes lit up at the news.

"Oh my! Orchid, your boyfriend?" She nodded with a smile. "That is wonderful. I'm over the moon, you found someone that made you truly happy."

" _There's more as well._ " He may have been many, many years older than her, but that didn't mean that Lang would pass up an opportunity for some gossip. " _So, you remember when I left home?_ "

"Oh, how could I forget Orchid? My tears didn't stop for a whole day." This was new news to the mute, and tear jerking news at that.

" _Really? You cried for that long over me leaving? I thought you said that all birds must fly the nest someday._ " The corners of her eyes started filling up as Lang explained further.

"Why yes, I do recall saying that. However, unlike most birds, we still feel emotionally attached to those who leave. Just because you were leaving doesn't and didn't make it any less painful to see you go. It was like losing part of the family, because it was." A couple of chesty coughs were caught behind the smile that Lang tried to put on for her as tears started falling down her face.

" _I can't believe it..._ " The bed bound man reached out and placed a hand on her upper arm, stroking it reassuringly. " _But anyway,_ " she returned, still processing but determined to plough on through, " _when I left, it was a few weeks before Initiation into the Academies, so I had essentially blown my chances at becoming a Huntress. Well... after the incident in Vale that led to Fox and I becoming a couple, the Headmaster of Beacon allowed me to enter the school under the knowledge that I cannot pass to the same high degree as anyone else in my year due to the time I did not spend there. That didn't faze me though, a pass is still a pass though I don't want to drag my team down and hinder our chances at better paid jobs in the future. So, yeah; I'm a student._ " She grinned as she signed that, 'saying' it out loud made it sound so much better. Then she silently giggled. " _I'm a student at the fresh old age of 25!_ "

"My dear, that's wonderful. It does not matter that you're older, that surely hasn't affected people in the past."

" _Now that you mention it, one of the girls in the year below must be a prodigy; she was initiated at just 15._ " Lang sat there aghast.

"That is some skill she must have, to be entered into an Academy like that two whole years early."

" _I mean, I've seen her fight. She's a little bit sloppy - that's what'd happen when you skip two years of training - but she has a skill with it that negates those missed years. I have only ever seen one other person wielding a scythe like that._ "

"A scythe? At 15? My word, she must be a big 15-year-old, to carry and effectively use such a large weapon."

" _Nope. She's taller than me, but shorter than Mom - I'm guessing about 5'2", 5'3" at best._ " Lang had no words to describe what he felt. Ruby Rose had that effect on people sometimes. " _But I see what you mean about me, age doesn't really matter. Sure, I can't graduate with the highest honours, but I can still officially become a Huntress now. I have a purpose again, and I can pursue it with the boy I love and a team I can rely on._ "

"And that, I believe, is all that you will need." His smile, even through the pain Neo knew he must be suffering considering how rough his coughs sounded, was warm and caring. It was a nostalgic smile too, one she had not seen for a long time yet brought her right back to her teenage years when something as simple as her Uncle Lang's smile made her day better. "What did your parents say about that news. Or Vinnie, for that matter? He must have been fairly shocked and surprised about you finally going to an Academy."

" _None of them know yet. You were the first one I told._ " The man couldn't help but let out a giggle. It was evident he wanted to laugh a little harder, but the sudden coughing fit into his hands stopped him from doing such. Neo was about to start signing when words finally made themselves known past the coughs.

"I see you still know who your favourite is my little flower."

" _Only you, Uncle Lang._ " The boop on her nose was a little uncalled for, but the hug most certainly was not. The smile on her face was a tell-tale sign of her contentment at being home. Unbeknownst to her, Lang looked at the hand he'd just coughed into and was worryingly calm about that blood that was smeared across it.

* * *

"So, how's this for a battleground?"

"Impressive, I must say." Fox was taken to the family's backyard by Vinnie and he was thoroughly impressed by the scope of it all. For a backyard, the size of it easily rivalled the small arena that they fought in on a regular basis in Goodwitch's classes at Beacon, and he assumed Vinnie fought in when he was still at Atlas. "How'd you get this?"

"It came with the house." Whilst most likely not intentional, the older of the two spoke that in such a way that made it sound like it was singlehandedly _the_ most obvious thing in the entirety of Remnant. "You would need to ask my parents for the full reason why they wanted to get a house with an arena sized patch of grass in their back garden, but I assume it had something to do with the fact that I was showing interest in becoming a Huntsman and Orchid was play-fighting with umbrellas with me back in our old house, so when we relocated they obviously took that into consideration." The man on home turf walked to one side of the large open space whilst the away combatant made his way to the other.

"Shall we go with tournament rules?" Fox questioned loudly so that his voice crossed the distance between them, fiddling with his bracelets.

"Gonna need to remind me what they are again Fox; it's been a while since I've been anywhere near that school so I'm not too versed in the ins-and-outs anymore." Vinnie twirled a small cylinder around his fingers as Fox rolled his eyes and recapped the essentials for their little spar.

"Tournament rules; first one out of bounds or with an Aura reading below 15% is declared loser. As we have no proper out of bounds, shall we say if you land on the flower border on those three sides or near the decking up here it counts as gone?" The young man nodded. "And remember, no guns."

"Couldn't if I wanted to" he bluffed, holding up the cylinder so that Fox could see it clearer.

' _That can't be his weapon, surely_ '. The once-blind boy stared at the object. ' _Funny though, it looks just like the Parchment._ ' Ozpin had, upon Fox's request, showed him what the Parchment looked like - he was reminded it's small gold hexagonal shape when he looked upon Vinnie's object, he daren't call it a weapon yet, but similarly why would he not bring his weapon to a sparring match? He shook away those thoughts and started calling the match to a start. He flicked his wrists and in with the movement of gears and parts the bracelets extended to their full form, his blades still extending close to his own elbows. "We go on 'Begin' right?"

"Sure" he smirked.

Fox began the countdown. On one, Vinnie flicked a switch on the side of the cylinder and it extended out to take the shape of his weapon. Fox stalled the count slightly in awe before finally calling "Begin!" Vinnie remained still, letting his opponent come to him. His weapon was a fuchsia and silver coloured collapsible Bo Staff that doubled as rifle when folded the right way. As a small item, the cylinder was easily 10cm thick and 18cm in length, but when it took it's weapon form it extended in length tenfold to 1.8m but compacted in width to no more than 3.5cm or so, still wide enough for a barrel. The thought of how he could fit such a large Bo Staff into such a tiny space crossed Fox's mind briefly, but then the possible (and most likely right) answer 'Atlas Technology' also crossed it, so he decided he needn't ask. The student took the first swing as he approached, aiming for a high strike on the man that was ultimately caught by the Bo Staff of his opponent.

' _He's got the range advantage,_ ' Fox told himself as he struggled for control, ' _that's going to be a pain._ ' The staff itself was almost as tall as the pair of them once fully extended and as such there would be very little chance to get in close, so the copper haired boy needed to find a weakness in Vinnie's fighting style and work with that. It wasn't going to be easy though, Vinnie had graduated Atlas Academy many years ago, back with the 35th Vytal Tournament, so he held many years of experience over Fox. He went for a kick to break his balance, but as the older of the two pushed him back he realised that there was no way the blow would have ever hit. Once Fox had been forced away, he swung the Staff around to deliver what would have been a very strong smack to the side of the head. The scarred boy thanked the fact that he'd sparred with Velvet a lot who was undisputedly the fastest of the four original members of his team as he ducked under that first strike then backflipped away from the second one that followed soon after. When a moment presents itself, you seize it - Vinnie did just that. He planted on end of the Bo in the ground where Fox once stood, then vaulted on his weapon to where Fox was going to be when momentum had carried him there and, sure enough, he landed a powerful and completely unavoidable sideways kick to Fox's abdomen that knocked the air out of him and sent him flying most of the way across the grass, skidding to a painful halt a few feet short of the flower border on the far side of the ring.

"Y'know I'm very happy to give you every chance to turn away and admit defeat. After all, that kick must have done quite a number on your Aura." Fox looked at his Scroll and tried his best to hide the shock when he saw that that single kick had knocked him down to 72% Aura from basically full when the match started.

"What," he wheezed, easing himself back up to his feet, "and walk away having thrown less than a handful of punches and kicks? Not a chance." He realised he was probably going to regret saying that and continuing, but the metaphorical shovel was right there and he felt compelled to start digging himself that hole.

"Suit yourself, but remember - I gave you the chance to leave." By this point, both Yubae and Oakley had left the house after their discussion at the bottom of their staircase and were standing on the decking right by the house to watch the young men sparring against one another. Vinnie taunted Fox by giving his opponent the 'come on then' hand gesture as he stood his ground unmoving. A tactical smirk came across the recovering boy's face as he shut his eyes slowly started advancing again. He'd sussed that he, much like Coco, preferred to keep his enemies at a distance rather than having to deal with them up close, but even if they did get close he had a Bo Staff that could extend over a metre further than Fox ever could. But he realised that Vinnie never moved from the spots he planted his feet; the only time he moved his feet when he went for the strike against Fox, and even that was a counter rather than a full-on attack. He wasn't being _proactive_ , he was being _reactive_ \- so much like his sister - and that was something that could be exploited.

The Beacon student was still getting used to the idea of using sight in a battle, so rather than trying to rely on a sense he was fairly unaccustomed to, removing the obstacle made everything seem so much more in his corner.

Fox picked up the pace, keeping to the ground and activating his semblance to get a better feel of Vinnie's Aura was 'saying'. He continued to read it as he got nearer, speeding up once again and locking eye contact on to him. Neither broke, neither broadcast what their attack was going to be first, and that's exactly what Fox wanted. By 5 metres, Fox was still running at him with no signs of slowing down. His Aura started showing cracks as he panicked at the lack of a window to strike. Within striking range of the Bo, Vinnie realised all too late that he hadn't reacted at all as Fox seamlessly brought his fist up from his run into his opponent's jaw. With that same momentum, he grabbed the far side of his top, leaving his arm draped across his chest and thrust the now airborne ex-Atlas student towards the edge of the arena with the help of his Aura.

' _I'm not going to get another chance, I need to act now_ ' the Beacon student reminded himself. He dug his foot into the grass before pushing himself off to catch up with his soaring enemy, who by this point had righted himself in the air and was on course to land on his feet but dangerously close to the edge. What Fox didn't expect was for the Bo to hit the ground first and for Vinnie to use is essentially as a springboard to bounce away from the edge and land near the centre of their ring. ' _Dust damn it,_ ' Fox cursed, skidding to a stop, ' _there goes my chance to win._ '

"Nice moves there Fox. But that's not going to happen a second time." In a move Fox wasn't expecting, Vinnie started walking (shock horror, I know). But considering how reactive he'd been up to this point, the fact he was now moving meant he was clearly swapping to a much more proactive approach. Suspicions were confirmed when the older combatant threw his staff towards Fox in a high arc and ran at him simultaneously.

' _Really wish I had guns now, this is prime target practice here._ ' Rather than planting himself like Vinnie had been doing, Fox shut his eyes and advanced too. He guessed that Vinnie had predicted that he was going to stay put, the Bo would land right in front of him then he'd strike from there, so doing this would make the weapon land behind and so there would be a Fox-shaped wall between him and his weapon. A huge disadvantage and a tactical boo-boo on his part. At least, that's what was thought, until Vinnie vaulted over Fox's head with a flip, grabbing the staff from its descending arc and smacking him with a strike much earlier than he's thought, knocking him over. ' _Okay, misjudged_ _ **that one**_ _a lot more than I should have._ ' There was no other time to think about things as Fox spun round only to have the barrel end of the staff thrust straight towards his head, the dodge being far more instinctive than anything else. The Bo wielder kept swinging and Fox dodged the next few strikes as well before he decided enough was enough. On the seventh strike, he blocked with his bladed gauntlet, and whilst it looked like he wasn't expecting it Vinnie continued, but as did Fox. He made more and more of an effort to block the strikes rather than dodge them, only doing so when he felt that blocking would do him more harm than good. Eventually the staff came down vertically and Fox blocked with both gauntlets crossing over. The struggle they had near the beginning replayed.

"You know how this ended last time Fox, make it easier for yourself."

"Not a chance; I've been taking in what you've been doing during our fight. I know your game plan, I know how you work and I'm going to turn it against you." Fox eased off the struggle slightly, giving the appearance of him losing ground.

"Really? Because to me, it looks like you're failing at doing that. What was your big plan anyway?" Fox smirked as he took that as an unofficial cue to enact it. In a quick, un-broadcasted motion, Fox's threw his arms open, grabbing the staff with one hand and pulling it towards him whilst pushing against Vinnie's hand with the other. That loosened the owner of the weapon's grip to the point where it was now essentially being used against him. First, Fox landed an upwards strike using the momentum of the exchange of control. Second, he chucked the staff out of both his and Vinnie's grasp and in the same motion caught him with an elbow to the neck. Third and finally, he landed a spinning kick to Vinnie's ribs that shot him towards the edge of the garden, hitting the fence. Vinnie pushed himself off to land on the grass, but by this point we would have lost anyway. His Aura may have taken the brunt of the force, but damn if it didn't still hurt. The older boy saw a pair of feet walking towards him, then a dark-skinned hand extending down to help him up. Looking up, he saw the smiling face of the boy who beat him.

"That. That was my plan." Yubae looked on from the house as her son sat on the ground in shock, then proceeded to start laughing like she hadn't seen him laugh in a long time.

"He looks so happy Oak. I think our little Orchid has most definitely found the perfect person."

"I couldn't agree more." They saw the young men laughing and embracing in a friendly hug, then Vinnie collected his weapon and walked back to the house with Fox.

* * *

" _...we even had proper conversations about everyday things; I_ _ **never**_ _could have that with Cinder and Roman and that lot. Honestly, the whole team is amazing Uncle. I feel so happy knowing that they're my teammates for the next two years._ "

Neo eased back, relaxing against the headboard whilst she grabbed her warm drink and cupped it in hand. Neo had shot off very quickly whilst her brother and boyfriend were sparring outside and her parents were watching to run downstairs and grab both herself and Lang a drink, then when she got back he had scooted over to the right side of his bed so that she could sit atop the covers on the left side. Roles reversed from before, but otherwise it was just like old times.

"They do indeed all sound like an amazing group of people. I don't believe I have seen you this truly happy in so many years, ever since your hospital trip." Neo sat down her drink with a smile to talk again.

" _I remember! I was hungry, so we stopped for some ice cream and you said,_ "

"I'm only letting you have one ice cream. But before you start kicking and screaming, I have a better idea for you."

" _Better than a strawberry or vanilla or chocolate ice cream?_ " she answered, using the exact same phrasing as she did when the conversation originally happened between them.

"Yup, much better. It's an ice cream made just for you." He booped her on the nose, just as he had done all those years ago.

" _For me? I get my own ice cream?_ "

"Not exactly, but it's made for someone who likes them all but is only allowed to have one," he ruffled her hair, really getting into the re-enactment "and for people with multi-coloured hair like you too. It's called Neapolitan ice cream." The young woman's lips ghosted up to a grin when she remembered what her next line was.

" _Neo-politan?_ "

"Nearly Orchid. It's ice cream with all three of your favourite flavours in it at once." Whilst no sound was made, she still made the effort to look like she had just gasped.

" _Really?_ "

"Really..." he was quite happy that the coughing decided to wait until after everything was done before it came back in force. "I see you remember the conversation as vividly as I do" he managed, still hurting ever so slightly after the long coughs.

" _How could I not? It was the first time you introduced me to Neapolitan which, to this day, is still my favourite food. I even named myself after it and after my mispronunciation back then._ "

"I don't follow my flower, what do you mean?"

" _Well, I didn't want you to be put in harm's way, so when I left, Orchid died. In her place was the person I am today, and I named that person Neopolitan, Neo for short._ " Hearing that news made the butler grin politely. " _Leaving was probably the single most difficult thing I've ever done - dying being second - but I didn't want to leave the memories of you behind forever, hence why I decided to name myself after the one thing I loved most from being with you all._ " Hearing _that_ news turned that polite grin into a Cheshire Cat level, teeth-bearing smile.

"Orchid, you never failed to amaze me, even when you've been gone from home for as long as you have. I'm so happy I got to see you again, before-" his coughs conveniently cut off what he was about to say, but he had still said enough to make Neo want to hear the rest of it.

" _Before?_ " He wasn't able to continue, especially considering when Oakley came in through the bedroom door as Lang drew breath to speak.

"Now now Lang," the man of the house closed the gap between himself and the bed far faster than he needed to, "I told you to rest easy for now." Changing the subject very quickly, Oakley looked his daughter in the eyes. "Your Mother wishes to speak with you downstairs now, if you wouldn't mind."

" _Of course._ " She grabbed her cup once again, then leaned over and placed a kiss on Lang's forehead before walking out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

"You were just about to tell her, weren't you Lang?"

"I was sir, yes."

"Lang, for the love of... we've said time and again you are family, you don't need to keep the 'Sir' and 'Madam' when just around us anymore."

"Sorry, old habits as they say." The younger and shorter of the two men sighed, placing a hand on his good friend's shoulder.

"I know. But Lang, I didn't think it was wise her learning about it from you. She wouldn't leave your side and it'd wreak havoc on her."

"But Orchid is a strong woman now Oakley, she would be okay. I promise." A teary smile came across Oakley's face.

"Oh, to have your confidence, even in your twilight days." The old butler smiled, not saying a word, because none were needed.

* * *

Yubae had opted to take Neo out of the house for their conversation, away from it all. There would be no denying that she would most likely race back home to be with him when she found out the news, so bearing that in mind she opted to stay as close to home as she could so that the journey might be made together, for ease of her own mind. They were taking a walk through the neighbourhood towards a large communal green a few blocks away from their house. It was decently sized with plenty of benches dotted about all over the place so that people could sit and talk if they wanted, or run around and enjoy what little warm sun they got up in Atlas if they wanted.

"It was being built when you first left, don't you remember?"

" _Truth be told, no._ " Neo admitted that parks and the like were never really her thing, especially considering she spent so much of her childhood having been secluded away from it all that as an adult it never appealed in the slightest.

"Well, it's become quite the little attraction around here. So rare nowadays to get something like this crop up, what with everywhere trying their hardest to build bigger and better structures for everyone." The mute nodded in agreement, then proceeded to continue on without wanting to communicate. It was her Mother who broke the silence though, and not soon after it had started too. "I know you're a smart girl Orchid, so you've most likely figured out that this wasn't going to be a nice little Mother-Daughter bonding outing, as much as part of me wants it to be; I've missed you and want to get used to seeing you around again." It pained her to do this, but Neo had to break the facts to her Mom.

" _It wasn't going to be for long anyway. Longer than normal, sure. But I've been accepted into Beacon Academy as part of Fox's team, so we need to head back in a couple of days before classes start again._ "

"I didn't know you were going to school now. That's fab Orc. When did you start?" Jokingly, the younger woman looked down at a non-existent watch with a determined face, working away at a small sum that she had already figured out, but was drawing out for maximum effect.

" _About 20 hours ago, give or take._ "

"Not long then?"

" _Nope, came straight here after I told the rest of the team._ "

"That's wonderful sweetie" she mentioned, pulling her daughter into a loving hug. "But back to the reason I brought you out here." Neo gave a single nod, telling her Mom to go on. "As you probably noticed whilst you were with him earlier today, Lang isn't exactly in the best condition. He's been coughing a lot and feeling very under the weather. Well, that's all for a reason." Yubae sat facing squarely forward, her head and body not even attempting to look at her daughter at the time. "Lang has got the late stages of a branch disease of DAG Syndrome, the same condition you have. The only difference is how it manifested with him. Everyone has an Aura, as we all know in our household, but Lang never had his unlocked so the disease remained unchecked for years. Had it been unlocked, maybe we wouldn't be here; we'll never know now. When he first collapsed on us, we rushed him straight to the hospital and gave us the information. It was fairly obvious once we took him to a doctor that he caught it very early on when you had it and lost your voice to it." She took her first glance to see how her daughter was dealing with the news and it was evident that it wasn't going down well, but she couldn't afford to sugar coat it or let only part of the information be heard. She ploughed on through to the worst part, the part that she knew would break her daughter's heart. "From that moment on it had been slowly eating away at his Aura from the inside, and after years of decay his Aura collapsed on him and now he's left completely vulnerable. They then gave us the bad news..."

' _That was_ _ **good**_ _news?_ ' Neo glumly thought to herself.

"... due to how far along it was, the damage was irreversible. Also, it most likely meant that... that his days with us were numbered." Tears that she didn't realise were forming started flowing down her cheeks as her daughter tapped her on the arm to get her attention.

" _When was this? How long did they give him?_ " Anticipating Orchid to run home, Yubae sat up straight.

"They gave him 3 months, and he's on track to meet that." Teary eyes turned to her equally teary-eyed daughter who was waiting on the second part of her answer. "That was nearly 3 months ago. When I spoke to him this morning, he said he believes he's only got a day or so left in him." The reality of that hit Neo like a charging Boarbatusk to the heart. Nothing moved, everything was in shock. She wanted to run home, but there was no doubt her legs would give way after a few steps. She wanted to scream and shout, but that has been out of the question for years now. All she could do was sit on the bench and silently cry painful tears into her Mother's shoulder. "Orchid my dear, I'm so sorry. Believe me, we looked for any trace of a cure but there is none. I wish it didn't happen many times over, but I know that number is far less than what you must be feeling." Her Mother wasn't wrong; Neo's thoughts were clouded over with memories of her Uncle Lang, the tall man in the family that did whatever he could to keep his little flower safe and sound back when she was younger.

" _Is there nothing we can do at all?_ " Neo pleaded, the desperation coming out as she looked her in the eyes. The slow shake of her head broke her completely. Sobbing was the only thing she could do now. After many minutes of non-stop sobs, the tears of pre-grief subsided. ' _Dear Oum, if I'm this bad now..._ ' she thought to herself, trying to make light of one of the worst situations imaginable. When her body finally decided to co-operate, she took her Mom's hand and started slowly making their way back to the Russet home.

I don't know if you've ever walked somewhere knowing that bad things would be awaiting you, but the walk for the two women was torturous. They each had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen when they got back, so they were in two minds about rushing to get there quicker or taking their time to delay the inevitable. Fox made that decision for them, he came running along the street ahead, clearly looking for them.

"Hurry!" was all he needed to say. Neo gripped her Mom's hand tightly as she teleported twice, once to close the distance between her and Fox, and the second to meet him. Grabbing his hand as well, Neo blinked in and out of existence as fast as she could to get home in as little time as possible, her Mom and boyfriend in tow. When the house was in sight, Neo tried once more to snap a little closer, but she had exhausted all her Aura with the constant teleporting that this time she blinked half a metre ahead and then crashed on the sidewalk. Without really missing a beat, strong scarred arms scooped her up before she'd even finished tumbling and the legs attached to it started working, running fast to get there as quick as they could manage.

' _Fox, how's-_ '

' _Just see him, Ni. It's all he's going to want._ ' Fox glanced to his right and saw that Yubae was actually keeping very good pace with him, even with him forcing his legs to work harder by channelling Aura into them - she must be doing the same. The front door was ajar slightly and Fox used his shoulder to barge through it, then bounded up the stairs three at a time until he got to the room, where he finally set Neo down just outside. A quick kiss on the cheek was all she had time for as a thank you before the pair of them walked in, Yubae following very shortly after. Oakley and Vinnie stood by Lang's side, the man looking extremely pale and weak.

"Orchid..." He even sounded weak now.

" _I'm here Uncle Lang, I'm here. It's okay._ " He didn't see her at all, he just felt her hands hold on to one of his.

"Are you there?" he asked again, the question breaking her heart to know his sight had deteriorated in such a short space of time.

"She's here Lang," Fox said for her, "we all are."

"Ah, so you-" the coughs sounded very watery, and when the hand was removed from his mouth the two students saw copious amounts of blood on them. "-you must be Fox Alistair."

"I am, yes sir." The dying man giggled; not too much though, he didn't want another coughing fit.

"It feels so weird being on the receiving end of a 'Sir'. Fox, this girl right here," he turned his head slightly as he held her hand up "is the one thing in my life that I cherish the most. I love my whole family here, but Orchid holds a special place there. I want you to make her feel as special to you as she made me feel." His eyes parted, revealing cloudy orange irises - a far cry for the brilliant colour Neo remembered from her youth, or even from less than an hour ago. Lang took in the sight of Fox and Neo, he saw how opposing they were to one another: a tall, dark skinned boy covered in scars and a small girl with pristine white skin and not a scratch on her. "I know I am not your Father, Orchid, but know that should you ever consider marriage in the future, you have my eternal blessing if that person choses to be Fox." There was not a single dry eye in the room. Neo smiled weakly, knowing that she couldn't physically say goodbye even though she wanted to so bad. That didn't stop her from trying as best as she could.

"..." She cursed her silence. "..." Another curse. "..." By this point, she was holding onto Lang's hand so tight she didn't even hear his winces of pain through her own internal struggle.

"You have grown so strong Orchid," his head centred again, "you all have in the time I have been part of the family. No-" more coughs, worse than before and that was saying something, "no one else could claim to have been part of a nicer family. I was one of your own, not a subordinate to your family. I _was_ family."

"And you shall remain so Lang." Oakley stepped in and rested his hand on the man's shoulder. "Even in death, you are a Russet." A single tear of joy trickled out from his eye as a smile crossed his face, his body relaxing into the sweet embrace of death.

"I shall... miss... you all... so... much..." With one final exhale, his body grew completely limp. Neo shot up and cried hard into Fox's chest, his own tears flowing over her hair and the three remaining people in the room hugging each other, also in tears, as Lang Russet passed from this world.

* * *

I'm sorry for leaving this chapter on a melancholy last note, but not everything is going to be happy all the time with Neo and Fox. It was more or less a way of bringing Orchid back in a way I deemed reasonable and relatable.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	41. In the Wake of it All

Quick shameless self plug: for those who haven't seen, I recently uploaded a new story called ' **Sunshine and Rainbows** '. It's aiming to be a collection of individual stories, each of varying lengths, surrounding the titular ship, 'Sunshine and Rainbows' - a 4-way ship between Sun, Yang, Ilia and Blake. The first chapter's up, and boy is it a biggie - 12K words pre A/N; I've never done that before. Give it a read if you want, make a suggestion for a chapter prompt if you want. I'd appreciate it.

Okay, I'm done, you can go back to your normal story now...

* * *

 **KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The funeral was the next day. Lang had known that he wouldn't last past a certain point, so he had been helping plan it with Oakley and Yubae. It wasn't the best experience in the world, helping their close friend plan his own funeral, but they believed that if it would make the man happy, then they would do whatever they needed to do. The service was intimate, consisting of the family and a few people who knew him from before he started working for Oakley. Contrary to the stereotype, the weather in Atlas was surprisingly pleasant for the funeral. Oakley read a eulogy recounting a few great moments they had shared together as friends. He rounded off in the sincerest and nicest way he could manage.

"Now, most of this part of the speech was written by Lang himself, so forgive me. He said, 'There are very few people in the world with such a kind and caring heart, and whilst we, the Russets, have some of the biggest hearts around. But the biggest of them all by far was..." he chocked slightly on the tears that were forming, "...was the heart my employers' daughter, Orchid.'" Neo's head raised, her puffy eyes looking at her Father from where she sat. "And I agree with him wholeheartedly on that statement. She may have left home and our lives a long time ago, but in that time, she showed more heart and soul than anyone else in our house. Lang continued, and I quote directly again, 'Orchid was truly an amazing young girl. She did everything she could for whoever she could, whether it be family or close friends. She was struck with a disease that cost her the use of her voice, leaving her mute; but that just made her actions all the more poignant. She learnt how to say what she wanted to say through her actions and over time I grew to love that more and more, even more than I already did. When she left home, a piece of me left with her.' Lang went on to say that to see my daughter Orchid one last time would let him die in peace, let him pass from this world happy. All I can say on that matter is that Lang died surrounded by his family, as a Russet, with our little flower Orchid by his side at the end. Thank you." Those in attendance clapped at the speech; all but Orchid, who remained there with tears in her eyes and a shocked expression on her face.

The wake was also very uneventful, all things considered. Yubae mentioned how he was to be buried in a few weeks' time, Lang's old friends spoke about him fondly to the family, there were small bits of food around but ultimately Neo remained away from it all, Fox doing no more than being there for her. The couple left early, saying they were going to go back to the house and wind down a bit. Returning home, Neo stripped off her Mother's borrowed dark dress and black hat, threw on a pair of pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt and flopped onto her old bed.

"Ni, you doing alright?" Fox asked, tie undone completely and the first three buttons of the shirt he'd borrowed from Vinnie already undone as he was working on the fourth as she spoke.

' _I'm going to miss him Fox._ ' She rolled onto her back so that he could see her face, frown plastered over it. As he walked over to her to lay on the bed with her, she continued. ' _Uncle Lang was always so nice, I wish I could have been here sooner. Just one more day, it's all I would have asked for._ ' She scooted over atop the covers to let her boyfriend cuddle up next to her.

"I know I didn't know him for even a fraction of the time you did, but I'm going to miss him too. But hey," he turned his head to look at her, "at least we got his pre-emptive marriage blessing." The mute's frown broke as her lips curved to a half smile at that.

' _I thought you weren't all too keen last time_ _ **I**_ _mentioned it._ ' Starting with a shrug, he followed that up with his reasoning.

"Before our whole ordeal with the Parchment of Volentes, Soul Mates never even crossed my mind as a legitimate concept. It was such a slow burn with Coco and Velvet that I thought it would never happen, I mean the girls fancied each other but Coco was being a complete... I'm not even sure what she was doing but it was ridiculous." Neo silently giggled at the thought. "Once Coco dropped that silly act, all of the feelings that Velvet had clearly been storing came pouring out and they gelled together. Most other couples I've noticed around took a fairly long time to get going as well. We're a week and a half in, and we already feel like we want to spend the rest of our lives together. You can't _not_ believe in Soul Mates if that happens. And I don't give a shit if it was 'by Technicality' or legit, I love you Neo and I genuinely want to spend the rest of my life with you. I wouldn't be happier any other way." Tears returned to Neo's eyes, but they were happy tears.

' _And you know from me that there is no one else in the world I'd rather have by my side. Not only did we get my parents' early blessings, but as a dying gift from him we got my Uncle Lang's blessing too. If we wanted we could get married right now, providing you have a ring in your pocket and someone to do the ceremony on speed-dial._ '

"Nope!" came the slightly too quick response. "No. I mean, um, I..." Calming himself down with a deep breath, he tried to form his words a bit better this time. "Knowing that we have your parents' and your Uncle's blessing for marriage is fantastic, I honestly believe that we will cross that bridge at some point in our future, no doubts. But I want to emphasise 'our _future_ '. We-" Her soft lips lovingly pressing against his own silenced him, and he gave in and returned the emotions after a couple of seconds.

' _I know what you were going to say, and I agree with you._ ' Their lips were still locked together, but they had to relent - oxygen was kind of important. ' _"As a Huntsman and Huntress-in-Training, that will come first. Then life afterwards can fall into place how we see fit." I know that. I can wait, I am_ _ **willing**_ _to wait, if I know that we can be together at the end of it all._ ' She cupped his face in her hands as she stared into his eyes, thankful for the fact she knew he could finally stare back. ' _And I would do all of that because I love you Fox. Forever and always._ ' She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. Then a second. Then a third, which went on for a little longer. Fourth time, it changed from a quick kiss to a proper, full on smooch. Breaking away from each other once again when the call of oxygen became too great for them, Neo scooted herself closer to Fox's side, her hip resting squarely against his side (being smaller than him, that's where they'd need to be if they wanted to kiss some more) and lay her head on his shoulder. ' _You were pretty quick on the "Nope" though._ '

"You threw the marriage thing at me again, and because you did I panicked. Sorry." He threw that last word out with great sarcasm, something his girlfriend did not miss at all. If the sarcasm came from anyone else it would have irked her greatly, but coming from Fox she felt nothing but a tinge of guilt.

' _No, it's my fault; if anything, you should be accepting my apology._ '

"I don't want your pity apology. If I'm going to win, I'm going to fight your fair and square and win _that_ way."

' _Really? You want to fight me?_ '

"Why? You scared?" Fox lifted himself up into a sitting position, ready for an attack.

' _Okay, pretty boy,_ ' she said with a little laugh, sitting up as well to remain on a somewhat level playing field against her possible immanent opponent, ' _I know that I'm small and cute and underestimated by the vast majority of people who try to square off with me, but you have not only seen me fight, you have also fought alongside me and have battled against me. You know how strong I really am. How do you expect to beat me mano-a-mano? Especially, now that I remember, when I beat you and your entire team_ _ **at the same time**_ _with such ease that it was honestly hindering on being boring._ ' She rested her hands on her hips, grinning as is she had already won the battle before it had even begun. ' _How will you fight me?_ '

"Who said anything about fighting you?" Neo's mind raced, trying to find the obvious hidden meaning behind his response. She found the answer, but a split second too late. Her eyes blinked a ghostly vanilla white as she was tackled to the floor by her boyfriend and he started peppering her sides with tickles.

' _You... son of... a b... Ah, I'm going to..._ '

"Sorry, hun. Can't here you over the laugher" he joked, internally wishing it was true though - it was too quiet. He worked under her ribs and her body arched in an effort to try and stop him, but it only gave him more places to tickle and more ammo to use.

' _Thought we... said... no more tic... tickling..._ ' she said with a wide grin on her face, her mind wishing that she could speak just for a moment, just so she could laugh away the pain.

"Ah, see I remember _you_ -" on that word, he went in for another strong attack, this time under her arms "-agreed to never attack me again. I don't recall ever saying such." She squirmed under him, trying to escape the onslaught of tickles. Using all her might, she moved her arms out and then reached and grabbed Fox by both wrists. Once she had, using her aforementioned underestimated strength, she lifted his arms away from her body. "Give it back."

' _Give what back? Wait... can you take your hands off?_ ' She was genuinely curious now, looking for any signs on his wrist that he could.

"No, but I'd like a bit of motor control back in them." If she had the ability to do so, the mute would have been "umm"-ing and "err"-ing just as sarcastically as the faces she was pulling. After a long while, she looked at him again and joked,

' _Well I don't think you deserve control back, but I'mma drop you anyway._ ' And she did just that. Fox only registered he was falling right as his face landed between Neo's breasts. ' _Oh, Fox! We're in my parents' house!_ ' Taking a page or two from Coco's books, Neo overreacted to the max; hand on her forehead, sighing, overdramatising everything. ' _What if they were to walk in on us like that, you sexual fiend!_ '

"You dropped me on your breasts!" he replied in a hushed shout, not particularly fond of the idea of Oakley and Yubae walking in to the house after the wake and having that be the first thing they hear through the door, his face a slight shade of red. Neo's smirk told him that she'd gotten what she wanted. "You're the worst, you know that?"

With a wink, she responded with ' _I aim to please._ '

"Well, that you do. And you do well, I might add." Her face turned pink with embarrassment as she waved a hand at him as if to say 'Stop it, you're making me blush'; which he was doing quite well. "But," he pushed himself up to standing position, using her breasts as a platform to push off of, "I think it's fair to say I won that, so I will take my victory with my head held high." As a truce act, he extended a hand for her to hold whilst she got up, which she took... then instantly pulled him down to the floor again, her body rolling on top of his the moment he hit the carpet. "Can't you let me have this victory? Just this once?" he questioned with a groan, body now stinging with the sharp pains of hitting the floor.

' _Hmm... nope._ ' She leaned down and gave him a kiss on the nose, smiling all the while. ' _You're my boyfriend Fox. My Soul Mate. That "title" comes with_ _ **some**_ _privileges, none of them state that I_ _ **have**_ _to let you win anything we do._ '

"Sure, fine, whatever. Can I get up now?" Her answer was to flop onto him completely, wrapping her arms and legs around his body to cling onto him like a limpet. He giggled, that turned into laughter. He managed (somehow) to stand up, Neo still holding onto him as if her life depended on it. He even tried a couple of times to pry her off, but she held a vice like grip on his body. Eventually he gave up. Yubae walked in and honestly jumped a little at seeing her daughter as an accessory to her boyfriend. The pair turned to the door on hearing the older woman jumping.

" _Hi, Mom. How are-_ " Fox seized the opportunity that had presented itself when she started signing to force her off him, even going so far as to hold her under the arms at his full extension to stop her trying again. She jokingly tried to reach out and grab him again, knowing that she couldn't reach, but equally so she knew she could get him back later.

"Sorry, she's being a bit... clingy at the moment." He emphasised the fact by leaning back a little, all while she "tried" to grab him again.

"That's fine, my dear. I just wanted to speak to you both, I shan't be long." He put Neo down as Yubae walked over to the bed, sitting on the edge. Knowing what she'd ask first of them, they sat down next to her - Neo filling the space between her Mother and boyfriend. "I know you were told of Lang's profession when you were younger, but I thought I'd elaborate slightly for you. Lang was a servant to your Grandfather when he had his own business and power. He wasn't a bad man, your Grandfather, just misguided, apparently. I never met the man myself. Lang was but 7 years older than your Father, but their somewhat similar ages meant they bonded over similar things, and they actually grew closer together as friends than they did as Master and Servant. When Oakley moved away from his Father, he took Lang with him. They found the house we first lived in after a few hours of searching and they had the keys by the end of the day. When your Father met me and brought me home for the first time, I saw Lang and immediately thought of him as a friend of your Father's. I was later informed that he was his butler, but I never saw him as that. Oakley didn't either, and that's when he knew he found the one.

"Time went on and we became more like a family of three than we were a couple with a butler. Vinnie came along and you joined him afterwards, and we were all happy. When you came along though, he saw you and mentioned you were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life." Yubae took Neo's Scroll and started going through some things, all of which were flying by too fast for the younger woman to notice. "From that point on, he outright refused to be paid anymore. He wanted to be nothing but an Uncle to both of you, so we gave him that wish. It was still his job, so he did need to be paid but he refused. So, we took everything we were giving him and we put it away in a separate account. We told him of it, obviously, saying that it was his. Still he refused. A week ago, when he first felt like his days were numbered, he wanted to contact you to get you here, but it seems you were coming anyway. That's the trouble with your multiple identities Orchid, we could never pin you down for long enough to send word to you."

" _Not a problem anymore Mom._ " Her Mother raised an eyebrow inquisitively. ' _Oh, right... I didn't tell her yet..._ '

' _Dunce._ '

' _Don't you "dunce" me Fox!_ ' He grinned as Neo turned back to her Mom to explain. " _Professor Ozpin has granted me entry to his school. I'm going to be attending Beacon Academy in Vale for the next two years, so you'll have an address to send things to if you needed._ "

"My flower, that's wonderful!" Hugging her daughter, she knew she was thanking her. "Anyway; Lang wanted to send for you due to his Last Will & Testament. In it, he said that the entire contents of that account go to his flower, Orchid Russet. I am merely fulfilling his desire. Everything's been taken care of already, it's under your name now Orchid." She reached into one of the pockets on her trouser leg and pulled out a card. "This should be linked with your new account within the hour or so." With hesitation, the mute took the bank card from her Mom. She smiled at it, knowing that her Uncle Lang approved this and gave her essentially all his money on his death. "He wanted you to do something nice with someone special either the day of or day after his funeral using the money on that card, to treat yourself and know that it's essentially him paying for it." Looking at the card, she noticed something about it. There was some sort of holographic design on it, one that you could only really see in the right light. Holding the card by two opposing corners and moving it slightly to catch the right angle, Heterochromatic eyes focussed hard on the task, then blinked to a matching pink hue upon getting it right. Fox noted how much Mother and daughter looked alike when they were like that. Tears came quickly as Neo read what was on the card.

 _My Flower, with you always_

' _Uncle Lang..._ ' she thought, smiling at the sky.

Yubae left soon after, so Fox and Neo were alone once again in the room. They didn't want to do anything else today except lay on the bed in each other's arms, but they were going to honour her late Uncle's request - tomorrow would be a day in memorial to a good man, and a great Uncle.

* * *

A much more intimate and purposeful chapter today. It's still got some light-hearted moments nearer the end, but I didn't want to lose the impact of the subject matter.

I apologise in advance if the next chapter is a bit lacklustre, Storm Emma (for that is what she it has been called) is zapping all the warm and fuzzy energy from me, and all I'm left with is a cold, miserable and cold shell of myself. I know some of you are probably scoffing, saying "that's nothing," but I've barely left the UK in my life, this is bitterly cold for me (and most others) and I am not okay with it...

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	42. The First Step in a New Life

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"So soon?" Vinnie asked, expressing his own and their parents' thoughts.

" _Sorry Vin, but lessons are gonna start back up again in a couple of days, so we need to head back and get caught up on things we missed over this week from our teammates and get my uniform all sorted. Plus, we lose time going back to Vale, coming here we technically arrived the same day we left._ "

"I understand but, it's just... so soon..." He may have been the eldest of them, but Vinnie was still emotional over things after yesterday. "I thought you'd stay a little longer..."

"We will support you nonetheless Orchid." Oakley mentioned, walking behind his son and resting a hand on his shoulder. "And Fox, of course. I feel as if you are already part of the family now."

"Thank you, Oakley, it means a lot." He turned to Vinnie and gave him a friendly smile. "Hey Vin, you _are_ welcome to join us, y'know. We did offer."

"I know. But this is your date, not mine."

" _I dunno, Fox was eyeing you up earlier - you may be in with a shot._ " The four Russets laughed - one silently - at that good-natured joke, all while Fox stood there perplexed - he still hadn't learned Sign Language, so Neo was taking this opportunity to use it to annoy him as much as she could while she still can.

"No, I won't stop you" the son said after his laughter died down. "It's your date. Just have fun _for_ me instead, and Lang obviously." Neo swore there was a brief moment her heart stopped at the mention of his name, but she realised that may be because his death is still so fresh and, ultimately, she missed him greatly. She smiled a thank you, then headed out for the day with Fox.

"And on today's books, we have...?"

' _Something that you have never done before._ ' He slung an arm around her shoulder on hearing that, smiling all the while as well.

"I like the sound of that plan."

* * *

"The Atlas Aquarium?" he asked as best he could, mouth still open wide at the spectacle before him.

' _What'd you think of it?_ '

"I think Atlas has too much money as a collective; but if they're providing marvels like this, I don't care." The Aquarium was a large building with the outside front face almost entirely covered with mirror-like windows. The rest of the building, an aircraft hangar shaped building, was covered in what Fox assumed was the same material everything else was made from, only this was painted in an equally brilliant shade of sea green. The only other thing, besides the colour, that made it stand out was the lack of shine on the building anywhere except the windows. But then, if you've got what is essentially a sheet of a naturally shiny material pointed towards the sky, then on a sunny day when any bit of light reflects off it and blinds, however temporarily, the pilot to an aircraft, a lot could go wrong quickly.

' _We just going to stand here, staring at the front? Or do you want to see inside as well?_ ' She waited all of three seconds before she got bored and tried to drag him inside, but luckily an idea came into her head 0.25 seconds afterwards that stopped her. She got her Scroll out and snapped as many photos as she dared of him, the boy completely engrossed in the sight that he didn't notice.

 **N - 'I've found the rare Gawp Fish outside its natural habitat!'**

 **'** ** _13 files attached. Click_** ** _here_** ** _to view_** **'**

 **'Might need to get it inside though, don't want this endangered species going extinct on my watch.'**

' _They'll appreciate the joke._ ' Now she was done, she grabbed his hand and started leading him in. Fox's jaw somehow managed to fall further as he entered. The sights weren't all that spectacular at the start, but the sensation of walking into a place that was full of beautiful things to stare at for hours on end amazed him. Not wishing to break him from staring, Neo made her way to get the tickets.

" _Two. Adults._ "

"Two Adult entry tickets. Are either of you a Huntsman or Huntress? We offer a discount for them with proof." Well, now she _had_ to break his trance. She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, bringing him back to the real world.

"Huh? Wha-?"

' _Do you have proof that you're a Huntsman on you? You could get a discount._ ' He nodded, reaching into his pocket. ' _Oh, and could you try explaining I am technically in the enrolling process? I might get in on that discount too._ '

' _Sure_ ' - "There's mine." He handed over his ID. "Um, my girlfriend here was enrolled into Beacon about a week ago, so she doesn't actually have her Provisional Huntress ID. Is there-?"

"If you give me your name madam, I can check the system for you. I will tell you now that if we cannot find you on the system we will have to charge normal price, regardless of if you are. I wish to apologise in advance if this happens, but it is company policy." The mute gave a shrug, not caring if she got the discount but still willing to give it a shot. It'd be nice to get recognition for her work and profession for a change, rather than a "good job" that came as rarely as a full moon anymore. "Name please, madam?" The mute then proceeded to spell out her name in Sign; it took a little while but they got there. "I'm sorry, Ms. Neopolitan, but you aren't on the Beacon Student database as of yet. We can't allow a discount for you based on good faith unfortunately." The couple looked at each other, then gave a small grin of acceptance.

"Neo says that's fine; one adult, one Huntsman for entry." They paid on her new card, got a stamp and bracelet, then walked in to the actual main building.

' _Soon..._ ' she thought to herself, a small grin growing on her face again. A few metres down the way, the small woman heard a gasp from her left and looked up to see Fox staring in wonder at the sights before him. They'd made their way in and were standing in front of the first tank, a large glass box filled with a large array of colourful fish. Against the stark blue backdrop they were in to mimic the open ocean of their natural habitat, the small animals of vibrant yellows, oranges and even a few pinks stood out as living, breathing blobs of colour that caught the students' eyes.

"Oh my Oum, they are amazing!" he said, having finally regained his ability to word good again.

' _Pretty awesome, right hun?_ ' His ability to speak was short lived as he planted his face right by the glass pane, the deep *dun* the impact made sending the fish swimming away and a few parents to look at the odd man in confusion. Neo - for probably the very first time in her new life - blushed in public from sheer embarrassment, ran up to Fox and yanked him away from the glass, shooting looks of apologies to everyone she made eye contact with, and even people she didn't just to make sure. ' _The hell are you doing?!_ _ **Kids**_ _are behaving better than you now._ ' She pushed him near a wall, away from the eyes of most people.

' _Kids would have had sight before coming here,_ ' he bit back, keeping the conversation in their heads to stop people from thinking he was crazy for talking to himself... crazier.

' _Don't use that as excuse Fox. You a grown ass man, yet you acted like a child._ '

' _Oh, forgive me; I seem to recall a certain someone getting a trifle emotional over the fact someone else chose an inanimate object over them to the point they went away and studied braille to get back at them. That seems very childish too, if you ask me._ '

' _I only went away and learned braille because somebody decided that finishing a book was more important than possibly finding a way to rid us of that ridiculous object's hold over us!_ '

' _But look where we are because of it Neo!_ ' He held his arms wide, gesturing the entire building they were currently inside. ' _You're at home with your family, I can see, we have each other; everything went just f-_ '

' _Where would we be if I_ _ **wasn't**_ _persistent? If I had walked away from Beacon and left you to your own devices? You would have been as blind as the day you were born, that Nuckelavee most likely would have kicked your asses - even if it didn't there'd be no photo evidence that you killed it, so no financial reward for that besides basic payment or any subsequent reward based from that._ '

' _Sure, fine, whatever._ ' The scarred boy raised his hands in defeat, not wanting to continue with either the conversation or the trip around the Aquarium; but a brainwave hit him and he swivelled back around to look straight into her eyes, their colours blinking from heterochromatic pink and brown to monochromatic ivory white as the young woman saw the look on his face? ' _And what about_ _ **you**_ _, Neo?_ '

' _What... what are you-?_ '

' _Where would you be, if you hadn't stuck around?_ ' Her irises remained white as she avoided any and all eye contact with Fox out of fear. She shouldn't have to feel that around anyone anymore, _especially_ her boyfriend.

' _I might have... stayed with the Arctic Fox Faunus from the café, settled down with her... I..._ ' she knew what she wanted to say, but she couldn't. She would have felt alone, even with the girl beside her, because something felt missing in her - because technically it was - and she'd never have it. She would stay for a little while before she eventually left because she knows no better.

' _You would be a target, an easy target at that, for Daerk._ ' The harmful intent behind Fox's voice was gone now, replaced now by worry. ' _There'd be no one there by your side, so when they came for you - because it was made pretty obvious that it wasn't an "if they came" situation - you'd be alone and, frankly, would be taken, tortured and eventually killed. That man was not the sort of person I'd want to come face-to-face with alone. And what I think you'll find would be the worst thing out of it all; there's a good chance you wouldn't have come home._ ' Her hand shot up to her mouth in a silent gasp. She pieced the rest together after that; no coming home, be it because she was dead or otherwise, meant that she wouldn't have seen her Uncle Lang again. He would have died upset, knowing that he never saw his little flower again since the day she left home.

She never would have said goodbye...

The tears turned on like a switch, streams coming out with every silent sob she made. Despite the argument they'd been having, Neo buried her head into Fox's chest and hugged him tight, afraid of ever letting go.

"I've said a lot of things before Ni, things that I ultimately regret. That conversation, going on the list. But everything I said is true. I'm not taking the entire blame, it was kind of your fault too _BUT_ you have a perfectly solid reason for it. I don't. Your Uncle passed, someone you've known your entire life, and you are still emotionally raw. Small things are going to irritate you more than they usually would, and I realise now that I may have... oh, who am I kidding? I _did_ grossly over-react and that was enough for you. I didn't make the situation any better. Lang would be so disappointed in me, for treating his special little girl the way I just did." He wasn't sure if he imagined it, but Fox was pretty sure he heard let out a tiny giggle at that, though in retrospect it may have just been her sniffing. He definitely wasn't imagining the smile that was now on her face. "There's the smile I love."

' _You're a dick, you know that?_ ' she said, tears still falling but they were subsiding.

"I'll take it."

' _Okay, first; that's my job not yours._ ' Fox choked on the air on hearing that, straining very hard against the gigantic belly laugh that nearly erupted from within that would have most likely got them kicked out.

' _I mean..._ ' he started, but was cut off.

' _Second, yo-_ ' Fox's response actually caught her off guard. She blinked a couple of times, just to make sure she heard it right, then continued on. She was going to be bringing that conversation topic up again though. ' _Second, you_ _ **are**_ _a dick. But then you are also so sweet and kind, and at times I don't know how on Remnant I wound up with someone so amazing as you in my life, let alone as my boyfriend._ ' He shrugged, then pulled her in closer for a tight hug. With another smirk, she responded with an even tighter hug than his, knocking all the wind out of him.

"Fuck... me..." he panted, the sudden loss of air genuinely hurting his lungs with every breath.

' _Fox! Not while there are kids present. Maybe later._ ' She was a horrible tease sometimes, and she knew it - it was kind of a specialty. ' _Now come on, we didn't pay to stay in the corner arguing._ ' She held a hand out for him to take. ' _But I'm holding your hand the entire time, because if you acted like a child once I'm not going to give you the chance to do it again._ ' With a roll of his eyes, Fox took her hand and the couple returned to the beaten path and enjoyed their own tour of the Aquarium.

The marine life that could be found throughout Remnant came first, as was tradition in their Aquariums. It meant that the more exciting and unique species could be found later on in the day, rather than walking in and right there is the main attraction of the tour. But that didn't mean that the generic wildlife was boring. Far from it - Remnant's waters were home to many amazing animals, both predator and prey. There were Tangs, Tuna, Salmon; basically, it was filled with all the types of fish that a certain raven haired Cat Faunus back at Beacon would love to eat in this part of the Aquarium, plus a few more. Fox was always drawn to the brighter coloured fish, so seeing the Angelfish honestly made him utter "Wow..." without him realising it. It was only when his girlfriend asked him if the fish was getting some special treatment or if she had ever made him say that was he aware of his actions. It took him a while to realise, but he eventually saved it.

"Everyday. You may not hear it, but I'm still amazed by your beauty every single day." Her cheeks tinted a healthy rose colour as her right eye shifted to match the pink hue of her left.

' _Sap._ '

"Love you too."

The couple wandered around the general tanks for a few more minutes before making their way into the Kingdom specific parts of the place.

"Y'know, having recently been to the Museum in Vale, I've never realised how much we like to split up all the Kingdoms' different things - all the Atlas in one place, Vacuo in another, Haven in a third and Vale filling in the fourth space, occasionally having Menagerie taking up the excess room."

' _One day, maybe we won't need to do that. But for things like this, it makes sense. Plus, I'm sure us students would be most thankful for having things in one easy to find place should we have an essay to write on the specifics of five different individual fish native exclusively to the waters around Menagerie._ ' Fox gave the most unenthusiastic "whoop" he could give regarding tests and essays. In all honesty, he'd forgotten about them entirely over the past two weeks or so. His lack of will to do anything disappeared when they walked into the room they just so happened to be talking about - Menagerie.

"Well, let's see what we can find." Each and every tank was home to an array of many different aquatic wildlife from the shores of Menagerie, mostly fish (to accommodate the feline population of the island) but not without a few other amazing creatures as well. "Okay, I think you'll love this one Neo." The mute followed the gaze of her boyfriend to the tank and, oh my Oum he was right! Inside was a crab-like creature with long, spindly legs and a couple of almost comically large claws at the front. But that wasn't what caught their eyes, it was the colour. The crabs in the tank, who were appropriately named "Sanctus Crabs", gleamed with pearlescent shells that shone with every colour of the visible rainbow, hence their name. And not was another interesting creature, a large seahorse - twice the size of any other seahorse they had seen here, with dark, near black skin and distinct white markings on it.

' _I've heard about these. These're called_ truci effingo Hippocampus erectus _, "Grimm Copying Seahorses". Their colouring helps confuse the Grimm in the waters, as they won't attack one of their own, and it occasionally throws fishermen off when they catch what they believe is a Grimm._ ' She looked to her side to see the taller man standing there with a grin on his face, staring back at her. ' _What?_ '

"Professor Port is gonna love you."

' _Charmed._ '

Lots of the animals in the Menagerie section were accustomed to warmer and cooler waters, plus having to survive against an entire island completely full of half animal hybrids - a large number of which hunt them. There were lots of crustaceans with thick plating and larger animals too, ones that would provide more of a challenge to those who wished to hunt them; but equally would be a bigger meal for that family when they were caught, it was always more a question of "when" than a question of "if". Vale, on the other hand, had much daintier creatures by comparison both in size and protection, made for much shallower waters and less ferocious out-of-water hunters. There were still some animals in the waters that you couldn't exactly get inside an Aquarium like this, even with all the Dust and Lien that Atlas could pump into the creatures' upkeep and wellbeing. It meant species like the Patch Hooded Cuttlefish could thrive in captivity with zero threats of their natural predators attacking them and nearly wiping them from existence.

Mistral held a monopoly of diversity over the other Kingdoms when it came to marine life. As the people of the Kingdom and its outer settlements all have a mutual respect for the sea, it seemed the Gods equally blessed them with a wide array of animals to look after. Their southern regions in particular had almost tropical levels of warmth at times, and this was reflected in the creatures.

"How'd they even feed these things?"

' _Great skill, patience, and balls of steel._ ' The pair of them were staring at a tank that, for the most part, was blacked out save for multi-coloured lights at the bottom, illuminating the giant Jellyfish in man-made glows of neon. ' _I mean, how big are these things?_ '

"Says here," he started, gesturing towards the information board by the creatures' tank, "that these ones are small in comparison to their wild brethren; they're 5ft in body alone with 18ft tendrils, in the wild those numbers jump to 8ft and nearly 30ft." Neo looked thoroughly impressed at that notion when an electronic voice rang out over the tannoy system.

 _*Ladies and Gentlemen, the Colossal Jellyfish feeding will be commencing in the Mistral Zone in a minutes' time, that's Jellyfish feeding in the Mistral Zone. *_

' _Want to stay?_ '

"Stupid question, of course I do." Despite the fact it was early afternoon, the lights were dimmed in the Mistral Zone to the point of twilight levels of darkness. Even the other tanks had their lights dimmed. A few people, most likely the Faunus' in the crowd, spotted a man in a heavily padded diving suit jumping in at the top of the large Aquarium tank with the Colossal Jellyfish. The voiceover that accompanied the feeding session was so recognisable that everyone in the audience who had not been here before all collectively either spoke or thought "Oh, I know who that guy is!"

' _I watched one of his old documentaries when I was younger, he once went "Boo!" to a sloth._ '

"Sounds like the sort of thing he'd do." The voice of the man spoke about the Colossal Jellyfish in detail; a brief history of the species, why the ones in captivity were much smaller and more docile and then their feeding habits.

*... about these magnificent creatures is the way in which they hunt. A Colossal Jellyfish is probably one of the only remaining non-Grimm predator jellyfish in our oceans. They are see-through for the most part, which is why they are such good predators - their natural camouflage aids their hunting. They are not scavengers, feeding of the remains of others' spoils, they much prefer their own kill...* On that cue, three bags full of sizable fish were released into the tank, then the diver made a hasty retreat from the tank. *...se little things inside their heads that can manifest Dust, essentially. Despite the fact that they are merely animals, these are the only known species besides humans and Faunus that can manipulate Dust to their advantage. * There was a yellow glow originating from inside the head of the Jellyfish, and the Huntsman and Huntress-in-Training knew exactly what this meant. That yellow glow brightened to three times intensity. Then it started flowing through the body down to the tip of a single tendril. A fish swam past a few times, even bumping into the head once or twice, before it came close to the tendril in question. With a blinding flash of yellow and white, the lightning arced from the tip to the unlucky victim and in an instant the fish was no longer alive - all its insides were fried, as were its eyes. The fish was dead. *The fish dies in a painless way, it's over far too quickly for its brain to even register what's happening. This meal will last the Jellyfish for 10 days. In that time, whilst it is digesting and running off the energy its meal provides, it simply floats around, waiting for something to happen.* The giant beasts floated towards their new kill and wrapped them in a tendril, taking them off to eat out of sight of prying eyes. The lights faded back up again once that was all done.

"That..."

' _Was..._ '

' _AWESOME!_ ' the finished together. They hugged each other as they walked out towards the final Kingdom. ' _Let's see you try and top_ _ **that**_ _, Atlas!_ '

...

Fox and Neo were currently eating her words. The room they stepped into was clearly the largest and tallest of them all, as most would imagine it would be. The vast number of species in the room was a sight to behold in of itself. There were regular fish - but even _they_ were above average in size and spectacle - turtles, arctic rays, seals, Fox was even certain he saw a shark in there, but Neo reminded him that sharks can't be kept in captivity and that it was probably just another boring, 7ft long giant Tuna.

' _I hate it when I'm wrong_ ' Neo admitted, much to Fox's own personal amusement, ' _it's such a disappointing feeling, how do you cope with it?_ '

"And you're asking me why?"

' _Well,_ _ **one**_ _of us needs to be right, and if I'm always right then you ca-_ ' the petite woman cut herself off when a giant shadow ominously loomed over their heads. ' _It's not just me, right?_ '

"Nope. There's definitely something over our heads."

' _Oum, I hate it when I'm right._ ' Ignoring her mental U-turn, the couple slowly looked up to see the source of the shadow. I don't know if you've ever had a plane flying less than 100ft over your heads, but that was the exact reaction they had when they saw what it was. Fox jumped in surprise and Neo's eyes blinked vanilla as they saw the creature; a 70ft (from top to the tail end of the tentacles), deep red Squid. The animal was suspended in a tank above everyone's heads with 2ft thick glass at the bottom for extra-extra protection and safety.

"Ain't she a beaut?" a strongly accented voice came, startling the pair of them back to the ground. The man was fairly tall, 5' 10.5", with a head of blond scruffy hair similar to Fox's look. He wore cargo shorts (even in the abysmal Atlas "summer" weather they were having), a khaki coloured polo shirt with the first three buttons undone revealing his chest, and a large and very noticeable Faunus tail - one of a crocodile. "Girl's the largest specimen ever captured alive, all thanks t' yours truly. I hate to see 'em all locked up like this though."

"Why did you do it then? No offence, but-"

"None taken; but a job's a job." He looked back up at the Squid, a sense of sadness coming over him at the sight of her - apparently it was a her. "Not long left girl," he whispered to it, "you'll be 'right." The man looked back down to see the two younger people looking at him with a hint of confusion. "Sorry, can't help it sometimes." He took a moment, looking between the pair of them. "You's ain't to sure who I am, are ya?" They both shook their heads. A small giggle left the man. "Aww, that's so refreshin' - to not have people recognising me. Tell ya what," he grabbed a couple of pieces of paper and a pen from his back pocket "what's your names?"

"Oh, um, I'm Fox and this is Neo."

"Fox... and Neo..." he scribbled away on the paper. "There. Tell your friends, see what they all say." He left them with a smile, his large tail curling up behind him to not let it trip other up, and he disappeared into the crowd.

"What was that all about?"

' _I have absolutely no idea; I think we ought to keep these though, just in case we missed something big just then._ '

"We probably did," he admitted, glancing skyward once more, "but there was no way that we would miss you, girl." With newly acquired photos in hand and a few gifts from the gift shop later, they couple were done and heading back to Neo's home to pick up their stuff and return to Atlas. They were barely three seconds in the door before Yubae caught them in a massive hug.

"I don't want this to end," the pink haired woman nearly cried through teary eyes and a croaky voice, "you have barely been home for a few days and yet you are leaving so soon." The hug broke so that Mother could look daughter straight in the eye. "Please reconsider sweetie."

"Yubae," the husband said with a tired giggle, "you cannot stop her from returning to Beacon. She is her own woman now, and she has been for the past eight years now. I know it has been a very long time since we last saw...well, _you_ here Orchid, but it was nice to have you back. Perhaps next time the stay could be a little more substantial? Fox, of course, will always be welcomed here again." Out of habit, the dark skinned boy bowed slightly.

"It'd be a pleasure Oakley. Thank you for that."

"No, thank _you_ Fox. You brought our daughter home to us. There is no greater gift to a parent than seeing your child's face again after so long of being apart. I have no doubts that you two will come to feel the same way in the future yourselves." Both of them grew slightly paler and shot the other a sideways glance of panic.

' _Be honest, you weren't expecting that, were you?_ '

' _Nope. You?_ '

' _Not from Dad, no. Vinnie, maybe; but not Dad._ '

"Oakley, dear, don't you think it's a little early in their relationship to be thinking about that sort of thing?" The man turned to his wife, the woman he knew always knew what was best. "Besides, they have studies they still need to do and an Academy to graduate from. Ozpin would not take too seriously to having one of his students graduating his Academy with either a bun in the oven or a crying child in one of the parent's arms at the ceremony."

" _Okay; Mom, Dad - FAR too much unnecessary information all at once. That's not going to be happening any time soon._ " Yubae took a sigh of relief whilst Oakley appeared somewhat disappointed at the revelation. " _We have our lives to forge first, then once we've been going at it for a couple of years then maybe we'll step back, get a place of our own and start a family. But only then, not before._ "

"I understand dear."

"As do I." The trio all came together for a family hug, Yubae's head laying on Neo's natural pink side, Oakley on her natural brown.

"Oh, before we go Yubae, we were curious if you knew who this was." The folded piece of paper was taken from his back pocket and unfolded, revealing a picture of the Faunus they met at the Aquarium, a big toothy grin on his face essentially cuddling a young Gator Grimm, the monster being the one looking more terrified than the Faunus. On the side was inscribed in pen was;

 _Fox / Neo,_

 _You'll kick yourselves when you realise!_

 _Viridian Irwin_

"You... didn't know who that man was?" Oakley asked, shock covering his face.

"N...no?" Fox was unsure if this was a good thing or a bad. From the reactions, he was guessing very bad. Yubae stormed off, making the couple at the door even more worried that they had done something wrong. After a minute or two, the woman returned and thrust the DVD into her daughter's hand.

"I do not care how tired you are when you land, you are watching this on your flight back tomorrow, alright?"

" _Why would I need to-_ " The realisation hit her as she looked at the box that her Mother had (forcefully) given her; The Crocodile Hunter. ' _Fox hunny?_ '

' _Yeah?_ '

' _We fucked up BIG._ '

' _How?_ '

' _That was Viridian Irwin, Great- x5 Grandson to the Legendary Crocodile Hunter himself, Steve._ ' In that moment, it hit Fox too.

"Oh, we are so stupid..." Neo just nodded her head. "We'll leave Neo's here, so you have something else to remember us by besides these." As Fox reached into the bag that held their presents, he was caught in a solo hug by Yubae; she was in a very hugging mood at the moment.

"Fox, I know you didn't mean it that way, but don't say things like it will be the last time. We are going to see you again. Both you and Orchid are very capable fighters, you've proven yourself against our Vinnie. He may not have been doing a lot over the years since his own graduation, but he is still a fully trained and qualified Huntsman, and you beat him."

"By sheer dumb luck."

"Is a victory in a tournament still a victory even if it was 'dumb luck'?" She had a point there, and the face the scarred boy pulled confirmed her reasoning. "I have every faith in your safe return in the future."

"Thank you Yubae. But anyway, your presents. Orchid helped pick them out for you." For Oakley, they have gifted him a simple pair of novelty gloves - each with the face of a turtle on. Yubae's gift was a Plushie of the Colossal Jellyfish for a keychain. Vinnie got a small necklace with the Aquarium's stamp on it, but it could easily be removed and replaced with something of more personal value to it.

"You are too kind Fox, Orchid."

" _I believe we have a flight to catch. As much as I want to stay a little longer, we need to head there._ " Tears again from the shortest one there. " _I'm... going to miss you all again._ "

"And we are going to miss you Orchid." With one more embrace between each parent and daughter, Fox shot upstairs to grab their belongings. In that time, Oakley spoke with his daughter. "My dear, you are going to be settling down now, aren't you?" She could guess what he meant by that, but to be completely sure she cocked her head to one side to express her confusion. "I mean, whilst you're at Beacon that's where you'll be staying, right? No moving around from Kingdom to Kingdom every few weeks or so?" Just as she thought, so she nodded. "Well then, if that's the case; we'd like to have your contact details then. We want to be able to contact you if we needed, rather than having to wait an undisclosed amount of time before yo-" A strong and sudden embrace nearly knocked the man over, but he regained his balance at the very last second, much to his wife's amusement. "I take it that's a yes?" Neo broke the hug and was tapping away on the screen in front of her; Oakley then realised that it was his Scroll she was typing the number onto not her own. She may be their sweet little Orchid, but at the end of the day Neo was still an ex-thief, and a darn good one at that.

" _Message that number as soon as you can to make sure that it's definitely me._ "

"We appreciate that Orc." The pink woman smiled a teary smile, then watched as Fox made his way to the door with all the bags they came here with. "Got everything Fox?"

"Yup. Got your weapon?" Neo nodded, reaching round the door to pick up her parasol and drape it over her shoulder. "Well then, this is farewell."

"It has been wonderful to meet you Fox. We hope to see you again soon." The two men shook each other's hand, then he and Yubae had one last hug before he handed Neo's bag over to her and the couple made their way down to the front gates and away. With a smile and a wave, the couple walked through the gates and shut them behind, leaving the Russet household for the last time.

' _Thank you, Fox._ ' He said nothing, just glanced over at her with a look of "Why?" With a silent giggle, she answered his question. ' _For bringing me home._ '

* * *

 **{END OF PART 5}**

* * *

Wow... just... It's insane to think where this story has gotten to considering that it started out not necessarily as a 'Crack Ship' but more of an 'Obscure, near Untouched Ship', and here I am at the end of Part 5 of ' **Senseless** ' with over 50 Favourites and 99 Followers (numbers correct as of 7th March 2018)

I can't thank y'all enough for your words of encouragement and through actions as simple as clicking "FOLLOW".

' **Senseless** ' will be continuing on past this point, so stay tuned next week.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	43. Five Fourths

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 **{TIME SKIP}**

This takes place at the start of Team CFVYN's Fourth Year at Beacon, roughly 15 months after the end of the previous chapter

* * *

A/N - I'm sorry the upload is coming out a day late, I had things at home that took up my time around my normal schedule that knocked it off kilter, and by the time they were over I completely forgot about this. You'll still get the next chapter of the story on Thursday, I promise!

* * *

"Well, Ms. Russet, do you know why we have called you here today?" Ozpin, as per usual, was sitting in his chair, mug off to his right. His fingers were interlocked in front of his face, elbows resting on the desk. Despite the friendly way he spoke to you, even as a Headmaster, Neo couldn't help but feel intimidated by the way he sat, even after all the time she'd spent here. That paled in comparison to how she felt when her eyes glanced to her left and saw Glynda Goodwitch standing beside him, arms folded and riding crop in hand. She honestly started to feel a little sick at seeing her there. Neo got on well with Professor Goodwitch, it's what happens when you both share a mutual interest in making others suffer and over exert themselves all while barely building up a sweat yourself, but that still didn't make the blonde Huntress any less scary. She focussed back on the man in the chair, gaining some form of control over her own body back, and proceeded to answer his question.

" _Honestly, no idea._ "

"Excellent; your team has fulfilled the criteria for this final test, as I have been informed you have as well." Rather than answer with words, Neo simply cocked her head to one side. "Allow us to explain. As part of the final test at Beacon Academy, Professor Goodwitch and I, along with a few select teachers in the school, randomly select one team member from each of our Fourth Year Teams and perform a simple test on each of them as individuals as opposed to as a team, much like many of your written exams - which I must add I am thoroughly impressed with. Team leaders of course are the obvious exception to this random picking process, their briefings were to simply keep the rest of the team finding out who was being seen next and helping them achieve their goals."

"I am also impressed with your work." Glynda stepped forward and the mute unintentionally felt herself leaning back into the chair away from the ever advancing Goodwitch. "I may have only been here a few years in comparison to Professor Ozpin here, but in all that time have never seen someone so dedicated to their written exams as you."

" _Well,_ " the petite woman began with a shrug, " _I didn't want to drag my team down in the future. I'm aware how it all works on graduation - each team member receives their own certificates and such, then the team as a whole is given a Tier of Expertise based on their collective grades._ "

"It seems you are well versed in that knowledge."

" _My brother graduated from Atlas over 10 years ago, it was more or less along those lines and I assumed it would be the same down here, even after all these years._ "

"If the system isn't broken, Ms. Russet" Ozpin began with a chuckle. He felt like she should finish the saying, but it was fairly obvious to all who knew of sayings what was coming next. "How much do you know of the Tier System we use?" Neo looked away in thought, trying to recall if anything sunk in about that when she was younger and was listening into General Ironwood at Vinnie's year's Graduation. Naturally she was going to be there, but not with her family - for obvious reasons. Instead, she stole someone's uniform and stood in as a guard to the ceremony. No one noticed her coming in or going out, just how she liked it, but she could never shake the sadness that came with not being with them as he got his award. After realising that she'd only thought about what she had done that day rather than specific aspects about it, she held her thumb and forefinger out and held them so close together they might have well been touching, all with a squint - Universal Sign for "A little bit".

"The Tier System is what we use to rank each of our student teams come the end of their Third Year and progressing into their Fourth and Final Year." Goodwitch opened the large window behind Ozpin's desk, then came back and sat on the edge of the desk, a very informal move on her part that took Neo aback slightly ever so slightly, but Ozpin was clearly unfazed by it all, no doubt having seen her do this many times before. "There are Four Tiers for teams upon graduation. Based on your joining time and having originally missed nearly two academic years' worth of exams and assignments, Team CFVYN would have been destined to fall either in the C Tier or, at best, B Tier of Huntsmen and Huntress Teams based off of exam grades alone and the bare minimum of Field Assessments assigned. These Tiers get you recognition for any and all missions in the big wide world, B Tiers naturally being slightly more dangerous but equally reaping bigger rewards more often than not."

"Yes, it seems that there are still those who never quite understand the severity of the tasks they ask of Huntsmen, offering sub-C Tier rewards for nearer high-B / low-A Tier tasks." The green clad man sighed and took a sip from his cup.

' _I wonder what our Nuckelavee takedown would have classed as_ ' Neo thought to herself as Professor Goodwitch took over speaking again.

"However, you have gone above and beyond for your team, that much is clear. You have attended so many classes in your own time to the point we thought it was bordering on unhealthy for you. And yet you soldiered on through and did those tasks as well as the ones for your own Year, even attending the First and Second Year classes and exams as well. But most impressively, you managed very respectable grades on all of them. Taking all of that into consideration, you've actually opened up the second and first Tiers again for your team." Neo's eyes blinked pink in amazement; there was a good chance to make everything good for the team.

"A Tier Huntsmen Teams are sent on missions we would personally believe to be far too dangerous even for a fully graduated team of Huntsmen in any of the lower Tiers. Then, there are the S Tier Teams." The student found herself leaning in awestruck at the prospect. "There are very strict criteria for becoming an S Tier Team in my school. First, all students in the team must perform to the highest levels in their written exams, earning at least Merited Passes on all major written tests. Whilst there were a few times your teammates were slipping, everyone managed to Merit all their exams; including this last one, which you passed with flying colours. Teams must also work well as a collective unit, almost blending into one another to become one whole rather than four - or in your case, five - parts. They must go above and beyond their call of duty in their 3 years under my tutelage, accepting more missions than required; I don't think I need to tell you how well you've been doing at that. Finally, they must finish within the top 5 teams in the year. From them, the 2 teams who I deem worthy from that group of people become S Tier Teams."

"The rewards for completing S Tier Missions is significantly higher than the other Tiers; one person's share in an S Mission could be the same reward for everyone in a C Class Team."

" _Wow, that's a lot of Lien..._ "

"Quite. Now, Team CFVYN is an exceptional case, what with there being 5 of you in the team." A brief amount of fear came across Neo's face, something the Headmaster caught and simply laughed it off. "Oh come now Orchid, would I call you in here on your own if not for the fact that what I was saying would be positive?" After Neo had come back to start attending Beacon nearly 15 months ago, her team had come to an agreement among themselves that starting Beacon was another chance at life for her, so she should take that opportunity and start anew as well. They came to blows over that, but not for the reasons Team CFVY thought. Neo was not willing to start her life over completely, but she mentioned how she would much rather give an old life a second chance. There was no hesitation on their part and they all seemed thrilled at the prospect. While everyone still called her by her nickname - the name they had gotten used to hearing and hearing about and was even part of the quintet's new team name - all official records of her at the school officially stated her as Orchid Russet once more. In her own 'words' (because her speech did not miraculously reappear in the time after she had started), when asked why she thought about going back to Orchid instead of becoming someone new, her response was,

" _This was the life that Orchid never had; friends, school, something to do, something to strive for. Why would I waste this chance, why smack away the olive branch extended in my direction? What would make me want to give something like this to a new personality that may never deserve it in the end._ _ **Neo**_ _honestly didn't deserve the love and attention you give. Orchid did... Orchid_ _ **does**_ _. So that's what she's getting._ " The mute smiled internally at the memory, something she looked back on as the anchor point to her new life. It was when she recognised herself as the girl she was born as once more.

"No," Ozpin continued, having not be listening to her inner conversation with herself (though she could never be sure enough this him...) "I asked you to come here so that Professor Goodwitch and I could personally congratulate you on your successful pass of Beacon's written examinations." He stood up, leaned across the table and extended an arm forward, which Neo shook almost instantly.

"There was another reason, and that was simply to allow you to pick your mission for the team." As her hands started to raise to reply, Goodwitch continued before Neo got a chance. "Now I am well aware that this is very much unorthodox, but _someone_ likes breaking the rules a lot." Both women's eyes shifted and stayed focussed on the man in the room, who shot a knowing smile to his co-worker as he sipped his drink again. " _All of us_ in the room know that it is normally common practice for the Team Leader to choose a mission for the team, then have them deliver that information to the team and then return to us with the team's response." The sarcasm coming out of Professor Goodwitch was very amusing to Neo, especially considering how alike the two women were when they took a long hard look at themselves.

"But," the Headmaster said, swapping speaking roles with his colleague, "as mentioned before, I wanted you to pick the first mission for Team CFVYN." Ozpin stood up and walked over to two boards, their electronic blue displays lighting up as they approached, gesturing for Neo to join him over there. Glynda remained where she was, shifting ever so slightly to better view the interaction. Neo turned back to look at her, and the Huntress nodded her head twice. The small woman smiled, then turned her attention back to her Headmaster. "I will also mention that you have complete free reign over the choices; no other team has been presented with the list yet." Neo looked up and down the list, viewing all the options available to her... well, to CFVYN. There were 'Search & Destroy' Missions, they sounded fun and she seemed to be drawn to them a fair bit; 'Border Patrols', not as fun but they required a large portion of time to complete, so they could have a bit of fun with that; that 'Recon' Mission sounded interesting, but she wasn't too sure if that'd be to everyone's liking; and these were just on the first board. She swapped her gaze to the second board, and was slightly disappointed when the number of options was vastly limited in comparison to the first board. "That's because these aren't your average missions, Ms. Russet. These are A Tier Missions." Freaked out by the fact he either heard her thoughts on the matter or guessed by pure chance (she was inclined to think the former), Neo took a longer and harder look at the second board. "I will say that each team may only get the opportunity to undertake one of these A Tier Missions in their final year, so this moment here is how you will get of take advantage of a clean slate." Neo seemed once again drawn to an S&D Mission, but the fact it was an A Tier S&D Mission piqued her interest for long enough. She selected the second A Tier 'Search & Destroy' Mission on the list, claiming it for Team CFVYN.

A slightly disappointed grunt came for her left as Ozpin stood there looking a little glum at her choice. She went to go change it to not upset but he raised his hand in protest. "Orchid, please, don't change it. It's... only my stomach playing up. I had something that seems to be disagreeing with it at the moment." Sceptical but compliant with his request, she lowered her arm and sent the information to her Scroll. As it was being transferred to her Scroll, she sent a message out to the rest of the team.

 **N - 'Where is everybody at the moment?'**

Once everything was sent over, Neo returned to the desk and went to sit down. "Don't bother sitting down again Orchid," Professor Goodwitch stated, "you're done here now. Return to your team with the information, and we expect to see you after it is all done." With a slight bow of thanks, she turned to walk off to one side of the room.

"Ms. Russet?" turning half way round and essentially glancing over her shoulder at the teachers, Ozpin smiled. "Good luck, not that I think you'll need it." She smiled back, then took up a stance and began running at the adults, parasol at the ready. She leapt towards them, then dived through the open window behind. With a couple of graceful flips, she righted herself and opened her parasol, her descent slowing instantly as she glided her way back towards Beacon's main buildings. Once the pair were certain she was on her way down and that they wouldn't be interrupted by anyone else, Ozpin reached into his pocket and pulled out a 50 Lien Note and handed it to Goodwitch, who smugly took her winnings from her friend.

"I told you that's what she'd go for. You need to trust me more on this sort of thing."

"Glynda, I trust you completely; I just thought the other things may have taken her fancy more than that one."

"Well, this 50 Lien certainly seems to say who was right and who was wrong."

"Thank you Glynda..." he replied. She said no more, knowing she'd won both parts of their bet and that conversation. The pair had bet on what task set they'd thought Neo would choose; Ozpin took 'Rescue' Missions and Glynda, based on her winnings, clearly took 'S&D' Missions; but there was a second bet they had. Whilst she'd never let Ozpin in on the secret, she had shared this second little betting information with the student in question. It was very simple, they bet on whether Neo would leave via the window or the elevator. Neo wanted her favourite teacher to win, so she said she'd help any way she could. They had come to an agreement that if Glynda opened the window the bet was on. Two nods from her meant she had bet on her leaving via the window. An open window and a shake of the head or no physical acknowledgement from the Huntress and Neo was to exit the office in the normal manner. Using their little method, Professor Goodwitch had only lost twice, that was when communication on each party's parts went wrong. A rare smile fell across the riding crop wielder's face.

Fresh-faced new First Years had their gazes pointed skyward at the sight of another student gliding towards the floor on an ice cream themed parasol. Neo could even make out a couple of them saying, "If that's how crazy our first day is, imagine what the rest of our time here's is gonna be like!" Such enthusiasm... they had yet to feel the relentless torture that could be Goodwitch's Combat Class, or Port's near endless ramblings about his time fighting Grimm, a back catalogue of stories so grand in scope it put his silver moustache to shame that could be refreshed now they were falling on new ears, or worst of all Professor Gale's Dust Workshops. Admittedly, they don't sound bad at first, but when you're told that the class is held two storeys underground in a bunker specifically designed by Atlas Scientists and Architects to withstand a blast of 10,000 freshly mined and unrefined Shards of Fire Dust exploding simultaneously at the front door of the "classroom" - if that's what you wanted to call it - that is situated well away from the rest of the main building that was Beacon Academy, then you start getting a little bit nervous. When you see Professor Gale as well, then you start to panic. Neo hoped their enthusiasm wouldn't go, but she knew that it couldn't last for all four years here... that said, Ruby was doing magnificently and was still as enthusiastic as ever about basically everything to do with the school.

As she approached the ground, her Scroll pinged a message. With her forward momentum dying down slightly, she took out her device and looked at the new message she'd received. Turns out she'd received another one a little while ago, but she was most likely just jumping out of the window when she got that one, hence why she didn't notice it immediately.

 ** _2 Unread Messages_**

 **Y - 'I am at the Gym with Velvet, we have just finished a round of training and were about to for another one, but if you need us now we can postpone.'**

 **C - 'Chilling out in the dorm, why'd you ask?'**

Her reply to Team Chat was as quick and to the point as it needed to be, sending it as she touched down, collapsing the parasol to carry it a little easier.

 **N - 'Team Meeting, fairly urgent. Any idea where Fox is?'** Coco was very obviously not doing anything of importance, because her response was next to instant.

 **C - 'He went with young Ruby Rose to the Service Shop on site. She seems to know his weapon better than anyone else.'**

 **'I mean his weapon, not his "weapon" ;)'**

 **N - 'Jealous Coco? :p'**

 **C - 'As if!'**

 **'Where'd you want the meeting Neo?'**

 **N - 'Shall we say near the Service Shop? That way we won't need to go searching for Fox.'**

 **C - 'Sounds good, I'll be there as soon as. Might bring my weapon too.'** Slightly late to the party but welcome all the same, Yatsuhashi replied to all of their conversation in a single message.

 **Y - 'Please keep the penis (or lack thereof) envy out of this. Velvet and I shall have a quick warm down and we shall join you there.'** She loved her team, there was no denying that. A little weird at times, but then what team wasn't?

* * *

So yeah, a Time Skip.

It felt right with the story, and seeing them all developed and grown as friends and as partners (in more than one sense) just seemed lke a natural progression - there's only so much I felt I could do with them in the early stages of their relationship. It's time to see CFVYN working together for a long time, and being an efficient machine of a Team.

Plus, Canon did it with the Vol.3 to Vol.4 gap.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	44. Debatable Service

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Beacon Service Shop was a little building that most First Years seemed to pass so often and yet never look inside it. It saved a lot of time having a store like this on campus, instead of having to constantly trek down to Vale to get the service shop there. In all fairness, the one in Vale was bigger, but this one was closer - each student who knew about the Beacon Service Shop took it as they needed.

Despite having probably the single most complicated weapon at Beacon, Ruby's mechanisms were all made of very basic parts that the Beacon store carried. The only thing that she maybe needed to head into Vale for were the unique aspects like her spiked pommel, the spiked tip to her blades... basically, all the spikey bits. Her semi-frequent trips to the store made her such a regular customer there that they had almost stopped treating her like a customer and more like a member of staff. Almost. She had access to basically everything in the store save the employee lounge, keys to open up shop and a till access code. So it was no surprise to anyone when Neo walked in and saw Ruby with a bunch of tools around her working at one of the employee desks on Fox's gauntlets, the boy in question sitting by her and talking.

The scythe wielder wore a pair of practical and hard-wearing black trousers with a deep grey, near enough black, tank top and a pair of thick working gloves, but naturally her trademark cloak wasn't too far away - wrapped round her waist. Her arms whilst covered in oil were on show, showing her extremely well-toned muscles. She hadn't stopped training since she'd got here and as such she'd only gotten stronger. Working with a giant scythe would do that. She'd also grown a little more now, having had a second growth spurt halfway through her second year. Now, she stood about shoulder to shoulder with her Faunus teammate, frustrating her platinum haired partner greatly, and her weapon was only a few inches taller than her now. She was drawn from her work when she heard the distinct sound of the bell ringing. Neo remembered hearing the bell ring, hearing Ruby's faint gasp from across the shop, then a mass of red glomping her in a hug that threw her to the floor.

"NEO!" she cried, her legs flailing about in the air as she lay on top of the older yet shorter woman, who at this point was turning slightly blue due to the weight on top of her and the fact all the air in her lungs had been forcefully expelled from her before she hit the floor. "How are- eek!" Luckily, Ruby noticed and jumped off the Fourth Year student, her silent gasps filling the overzealous 17-year-old with both relief and embarrassment. "Sorry..."

" _Don't be. Nearly everyone I've been with has been on the bottom, so you're a rare exception._ " Neo finished signing with a wink at the hooded brunette, who started turning a shade of pink that matched Neo's hair. " _You, and a certain scarred boyfriend of mine._ " On cue, Fox walked up and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her off the ground and planting a kiss on her forehead as he did so. ' _How's it all going hun?_ '

"Not too bad actually. I have no idea how her mind comes up with these crazy ideas, but they always work perfectly at that still amazes me to this day." He turned to speak to Ruby again and was going to finish there, but he smirked and shot his girlfriend another look. "Kind of like you." The mute buried her head into his chest with a smile on her face. "Is it alright if I shoot off Rubes?"

"Of course it is. Team Meetings are important. I'll do my best to get as much done on here as I can before you get back." Nodding in appreciation, Fox lead Neo out of the shop and across the way to sit opposite on the grass outside.

"Before you ask, I read the messages."

' _I figured,_ ' she replied, gesturing the outside world, ' _hence why we're outside now by your doing rather than mine and how Ruby knew we were having a team meeting._ '

"Well, I saw the messages saying that you were coming to meet up here, so I decided that I'd wait until someone showed up, then wait with them until we're all here." He pulled her closer to his side, resting his head on her shoulder. "And I'm glad it was you first. I'm not going to lie, I was a bit worried when you were called to speak with Ozpin and Goodwitch."

' _Why? What's there to worry about?_ ' She glanced at him, trying to suss how he was feeling through his eyes and facial expression. It wasn't working, so it looks like it'd be the old-fashioned method instead. ' _Are you worried about me?_ '

"Of course I am Ni." Realising that he basically snapped at her - judging from his own reaction to her eyes shifting to vanilla white - he reigned himself in and tried again, calmer this time. "Yes. You're my girlfriend, have been for about 15 months now, and even now I worry about you."

' _And so why were you stressing about my mini-meeting with the Head Honchos?_ ' After a brief chuckle, Fox answered.

"Honestly? I was scared they were going to tell you 'You're not good enough, leave Beacon at once!', or words similar to that."

' _No. No, it was the opposite actually._ '

"Really? That's great Ni."

' _I know! But let's wait until everyone's here, then I can tell them all at once, if you don't mind waiting. I can always tell you and the-_ ' The kiss seemed to answer her question as it silenced her thoughts. ' _Waiting it is then_ ' she joked, smiling once again and sitting with him until their five-piece team had assembled.

After 10 minutes Coco rocked up carrying her weapon, intent on heading into the shop after they were done to get it checked over. Yatsuhashi and Velvet arrived a few minutes after, approaching the trio mid-conversation.

"...I'm just saying, none of us have ever seen him fight nor heard stories of him fighting; he's a wild card if ever there was one."

" _I dunno Coco..._ "

"Oh, come on!" The dual haired team leader noticed the tank and mage approaching, then skipped the introductions and went straight into business... though not the business they'd turned up for, but the completely unrelated business they were discussing upon their arrival. "Guys, help me out here." Rabbit ears drooped ever so slightly at the prospect, but she listened nonetheless - it was darn near impossible _not_ to listen with those things on your head. "Who'd win in a fight amongst all the teachers. My Lien would be on Ozpin." Pride oozed from her voice as she spoke, as if she knew from the get go that she was going to win.

" ** _I_** _, on the other hand, think that Goodwitch has the fight in the bag._ " The fashionista scoffed at the ice cream themed girl's assurance in herself.

"You're just saying that because you're so alike that you'd be betraying your buddy by not picking her." Neo's eyes shot to Coco aggressively, her irises switching colours so that pink and brown aligned with her hair.

" _The woman has literally stopped bullets mid-flight, tossed Beowolves and Ursa off to the side like they were mere inconveniences to her and, if you remember correctly, during the last week of our second year_ _ **five**_ _Fourth Year student teams got together and attacked her all at once, and she thoroughly kicked their asses. 20-vs-1 and she still came out victorious. How could you_ _ **not**_ _put money on her?_ "

"Brute force, maybe she has them beat," Fox chimed in, "but there is always strategy, there always needs to be a plan. And who is master of the plan at Beacon? Port." They tried to remain impartial, they really did, but Velvet and Yatsuhashi couldn't hold it in anymore and they started laughing. "Really?" The other two girls joined in, the smallest and oldest of the group laughing silently. " _Really?_ Why don't you believe me?"

" _Give a reason we should, pretty boy._ " Neo loved teasing him, seeing him all worked up was still very cute to her, even after all this time of dating. With a clearing of his throat, the copper haired young man listed off his reasons.

"Well, Professor Port is a Huntsman, so-"

"As are, slash were, the rest of them" Yatsuhashi reminded him, his first words in the discussion, if you didn't count laughter as words.

"- _so,_ that means he has had plenty of experience in battle. Unlike the rest of the Huntsmen-turned-teachers, he specialised afterwards in tactics. Exploiting weak spots of Grimm, analysing their movements and patterns of attack and using that knowledge to his advantage. He spent so much time around Grimm he probably knew them better than they could know themselves. And he's spent just as much time around them as he has his colleagues. There's a good chance he's prepared for a fight like that, and being prepared is half the battle won." He didn't feel like he was convincing anyone, so he decided to humour himself. "Failing that, he could always talk them to death."

"Fox, sweetie," Velvet said in probably the single most patronising voice she could unintentionally muster, "I don't want to sound patronising but Port's... old. He's slow. And his moustache and eyebrows cover most of his face." Okay, he really didn't convince anyone at all. "You want someone who is the exact opposite of Port to win this battle." Fox's eyes widened immediately, aware exactly where their Faunus teammate's mind had segued to.

"Is that who you're putting forward for this hypothetical fight?" he asked in a mixture of disbelief and uncertainty - he needed to hear her say it with her own mouth else his mind was playing tricks on him.

"Yes, Doctor Oobleck would be so all over the place, there's no way anyone else could win."

"You're crazy."

' _You suggested Professor "Bore-people-to Death-with-Tales-of-My-Youth" Port._ '

' _Minor details._ '

"Listen, I'd like to see you try hitting something that's travelling so fast they literally either leave afterimages of themselves in their immediate wake or appear to stretch. And he could bore people to death too, y'know. More convincingly as well, I might add."

"Yeah, other normal people like you or me." Coco was intent on destroying both of their hopes now. "These are colleagues, people they've worked with for years. The stories must have grown old, and they're used to both the high speed ramblings of Doctor Oobleck and the slow plods of Port."

" _So what, does that mean Ozpin will cryptic them half to death, then walk away and let them struggle until they either_ _ **do**_ _find a way out or die horribly trying?_ "

"...In all this time, we haven't asked for Yatsu's opinion." Four pairs of eyes now looked at him, none of which fazed him. There was a slight hint of hesitation when Fox looked at him, but that's mostly because he didn't want to feel like Fox had been betrayed by his own partner for not siding with him. But then again, any of his teammates might have felt that same way.

' _Oh well, in for a penny._ ' - "Professor Gale." No one said anything for a long while. In their defence, they were trying to figure out why on Remnant their most level-headed and easily the sanest friend they had suggested Professor Gale would win in a fight between the teachers.

"Yatsu, are you alright?"

"I am perfectly fine Velvet. Why do you ask?"

"'Why'd she ask'?" The gunner was dumbfounded at his response. "Yatsu, rather than suggest a teacher who is capable in a fight, or at least has some semblance of fighting skill, you decided to pick Dorothy Gale; a teacher who most of the students know or will soon find out is certified crazy, and spends so much time in her lab that I'm not even sure she exists in a physical form outside of that place." The tank nodded his head, understanding her scepticism at his choice. Everyone else seemed to share that view. But he had his reasons.

"So because none of us have actually seen her outside of her workshop, we don't know what she would be like in the battlefield. And I'm no expert, but her bracelets seem to hold a lot of Dust for a decorative piece of jewellery, and I've never seen anyone - save those highly into their fashion - with such intricately designed Dust-woven materials in their outfits. Whatever her weapon is, there is no doubt it's a Dust heavy weapon. And, she is a _Dust_ teacher; there is a very high chance that she knows more about Dust than she ever lets on, so she would have aces up her sleeves for every occasion. Remember that lesson last year with Port and Goodwitch and that Boarbatusk? She seemed pretty skilled." Scepticism turned to annoyance as his reasoning sounded more and more convincing. The group's attention was broken with a single loud clap from Neo.

" _That's not what we're here for, though I am very happy to continue with this later._ " The mute was pretty sure she heard Coco sigh in relief. " _I went to see Ozpin and Goodwitch, as you all know._ "

"How did it go Neo?" the Faunus asked.

" _Really well. They commended me for my attendance to the First and Second Year lessons and exams, even congratulated me for completing them to a great standard. Then they mentioned the Team Tiers._ " Neo knew where the conversation was heading. Everyone else did not, and that's what worried them. They'd tried their hardest during their first year and a half at Beacon to be the best team in their year, and while taking Neo in was something they have not regretted, they knew that chances of achieving that goal would all but disappear - this was most likely going to prove it. " _They mentioned that 'When you started, you were destined to be C Tier, low B Tier at best.' I never wanted to drag you down, which is why I went to First Year and Second Year classes. Now, with everything I've done for the team and myself, the A Tier is easily within reach and we're even in with a chance to be one of the S Tier Teams too!_ " Four different shades of brown eyes all lit up at the news.

"That's great Neo!" Coco practically squealed, initiating the team hug. "You're the best ex-psychopath a girl could want in her life!" A silent laugh came from the girl, showing her appreciation for the comment. She broke from the hug to continue.

" _And, as I was there, they offered me first dibs on the missions for our Fourth Year. So, I took one of the A Tier S &D Missions._" Waving her Scroll, she opened up the document that housed the mission brief and magnified so that the whole team could see it. " _I think you'll like this one._ "

 ** _MISSION_** ** _TYPE: Search and Destroy_**

"Ah, you know us so well Neo."

 ** _MISSION_** ** _TIER: A Tier_**

"That's going to be so good if we can keep picking these ones."

" _Sorry Coco, but we're only allowed one per Full Term, I believe. It might even only be one for the whole year._ "

"Then why'd you blow our load at the first opportunity?"

"Coco..."

"What's up hunny-bun? Don't like the innuendos?"

"It's not the innuendos; Neo had a choice, this was her choice. Don't chastise her for it."

 ** _LOCATION: 'The Four Season Springs' Resort, South-Eastern Vale_**

Coco shot a glance at Neo, who noticed and promptly avoided all eye contact with her for the remainder of the brief.

"I used to go past there a lot when I was younger."

"How did you know that? You were blind."

"Having your sibling screaming 'Four Season Springs! Can we go Mommy? Pleeeaaassseee?' every time you pass kind of gives the game away."

 ** _REWARD: 120,000 Lien, plus a BEP stay at The Resort_**

"Wonder what BEP stands for?"

"It says at the bottom that BEP stands for Basic Expenses Paid; so that's our Room, our Main Meals, and a Pass for access to the Resort."

"Neat."

" _Are you both going to ignore that the Reward is 120,000 Lien?!_ "

 ** _BRIEF: Staff at The Resort have noticed a decline in customers due to unexpected Grimm activity in the surrounding area. The frequency of the creatures' appearances makes them believe that there are a small few Grimm nests nearby, perhaps even more. There are reports of large quantities of Alpha Grimm, suggesting at least two Alpha nests. Also, an as-yet undocumented water-based Grimm is attacking guests upon entering the 'Summer Spirit' Spring, supposedly killing them._**

 ** _\- Eliminate Grimm in the nearby area (Resort Grounds, plus 2.5km radius)_**

 ** _\- Locate and destroy any Grimm nests, prioritising Alpha nests._**

 ** _\- Eliminate water-based Grimm in 'Summer Spirit'_**

 ** _' ' - Document if possible (photographs, detailed accounts of attacks, behaviour, etc.)_**

"Wow, it's going to be like a regular holiday Ni; hope your photography skills haven't been getting rusty."

 ** _TIME FRAME: 4 weeks_**

 ** _3 weeks for the Mission, 1 week relaxation week; else 4 weeks_**

"That's incentive if ever I've seen it to get a mission done quick."

 ** _CONTACT: Maron Chive, Head Receptionist at 'Four Season Springs'._**

Sliding her Scroll into her pocket after they'd finished their briefing, Neo took a forceful - yet highly unnecessary - breath.

" _What are people's thought? Just so you know, it's all subject to change, and we will be assigned a few low C Tier Missions to balance out everything_ _ **if**_ _we decide to do this one._ "

"You've got my vote, Ni." Fox shot her a smile, reassuring her.

"I am personally up for it" Yatsuhashi added, his deep voice carrying across the air to their ears in a way that filled them with confidence. Their Faunus teammate nodded, confirming that she was willing to take the mission. Her partner and the team leader of CFVYN spoke last.

"You know how to pick 'em Neo. The mission was a good choice too." The wink that came from behind lowered sunglasses brought a healthy blush to the mute's face. Emotions came so much easier to her now, ever since she started dating Fox and ever since she'd joined Beacon. There was no need for her to hide all her emotions away and only let them surface when she had an outlet to express herself. In the year and a bit she'd been with them, she became a new person to them. But to her, she'd become her old self once again; she became Orchid Russet. "When'd we need to confirm we want this one?" The eyes of Neo blinked to brown as she racked her brain for a few moments in an effort to remember if Ozpin had given a date. Upon due consideration, no. No, he had not.

" _Not a clue. But the sooner, the better._ "

"Good. You're not going anywhere, are you Velv?" The bunny shook her head. "Okay, then I'm going to trust you with this again, alright? I'll go with Neo to confirm our mission, you three can head back to the shop until we're done. She just needs a routine check-up hun." Handing over her weapon to anyone normally made Coco throw a bit of a tantrum, despite the fact she was their leader. But with Velvet, and the rest of the team to a lesser extent, she didn't worry about them doing anything she'd disapprove of.

" _We'll see you as soon as we're done._ " The fashionista wrapped her arm around the mute's waist and started walking off back to the Tower, the latter shooting her boyfriend a friendly smile and blowing a kiss his way. ' _Before I forget Fox,_ '

' _Yeah?_ '

' _Once she's done with your weapons, tell Ruby the new First Years have arrived._ ' She caught the beginnings of another smile as she and Coco rounded a corner out of one another's view. Neo and Fox had been hanging around with Team RWBY a little more over the break; Yang wanted to spar with Fox more and more to improve both of their skills with their gauntlet weapons. The blonde brawler wasn't bad with her Ember Celica, but at times she let her temper get the better of her and she became reckless. Fox sparred with her to improve their melee skill with the weapons and his ranged attacks then afterwards, just because she was there, Neo often fought Yang to test her skills against someone who was much nimbler than she was. Neo also used the opportunity to aggravate the girl into getting fuelled with rage, then trying to get her to focus the anger rather than let it explode and all the training that they'd been doing went to waste. It was safe to say that it was most definitely paying off, Neo was often given a run for her money now against Yang; she'd even been hit a few times hard enough to warrant throwing the rest of the fight to recover.

Fox likewise fought against Blake, because where Yang went Blake was sure to be seen close behind. Fox was fast, faster than Blake even, but she was slippery. Her semblance made it difficult to know when he was fighting the raven haired girl herself, or a Shadow Clone. But that kept him on his toes, so he wasn't going to complain.

There were times when the now-Fourth Year couple paid a visit to the younger two members as well. Ice blue and heterochromatic eyes often ended up buried in textbooks whenever they met up, Weiss taking every chance to learn about things that she herself had yet to cover in classes for a little head start on her peers. As such, she'd also studied very basic Sign Language to communicate better with Neo, just so she could understand her without her constantly having to type up or write down what she said. The younger two in each couple always looked at their partners in wonder, thinking out loud to the other on multiple occasions in nothing more than whispers at how they could get along so well even though they both thought that these two would be the worst if left together - Weiss' insistence on following the rules by the book and Neo's past life of doing everything but - and yet every time they are proven so wrong.

Fox and Ruby would often be together working on his weapons, as she was the one who put together his new gauntlets so she knew the ins and outs of them in much better detail than he could at the moment. Ruby had almost completely reconstructed his weapons from the basics bit by bit. They were repurposed to include guns in them, giving Fox a new and improved range like he had never had before. The guns weren't too massive, just simple guns positioned in the 'knuckles' of his weapons to give a bit of a powerful kick if he used them in tandem with punches. Ruby also included a mechanism in them so that the blades could extend out and act more like proper blades for slicing, almost like a Mantis. But the first thing she did, back before he and Neo went to Atlas the first time before her Uncle died, was to add a collapsible feature to them so that he didn't need to haul large, orange blades out in the open.

As she did all this (with Fox's somewhat limited help due to her tendency to be a little bit possessive over the weapons, despite them not being hers), the pair talked. In their conversations, Ruby often mentioned how this year was going to be exciting for her as all her old friends from Signal that were coming to Beacon would be around and that meant she'd finally be older than someone in the school - she hated how weird it was seeing new people coming to the school you've been at for a year and they're already older than you. So, when Fox, Velvet and Yatsuhashi all returned to the shop, Ruby was clearly winding down her work on the copper haired boy's weapons.

"Hey guys, you took a while."

"Well, we were discussing... things..." When one of the scythe wielder's eyebrows shot up upon questioning the Faunus' choice of words, Yatsuhashi took it upon himself to tell her straight.

"The five of us ended up arguing over which teacher would win in a fight." His two younger teammates shot him a look that made it seem like the information he so willing gave out was knowledge so precious it would kill everyone on the planet if another living soul found out. The giant's response on seeing their looks; a simple shrug.

"Oh, cool! Who'd you all pick? Wait, no! Don't tell me... actually, yeah, go ahead." As mouths opened to speak, Ruby jumped in once again. "No! I mean... urgh, just say something before I'm here all day..." Clearly, this was not a first occurrence for the just-as-bubbly-as-when-she-first-started Third Year.

"Well, there was no actual winner" Velvet admitted, seeming ever so slightly ashamed at the statement. "All five of us suggested someone different; Ozpin, Goodwitch, Port, Dr Oobleck, and Professor Gale. There's not mu-"

"Wait, wait, wait. Professor _Gale?_ "

"I know," Fox mentioned, riding off the seventeen year old's sure-fire uncertainty at her place in the runnings, "how can _she,_ of all people, face off against the likes of Professor Port, who we know for a fact has the experience and the battle know-how to best even professional Huntsmen still in their prime." Scepticism grew ever clearer on the face of the girl in red, frustrating the scarred boy to the point where the red flush of anger on his cheeks became ever noticeable even past his darker skin tone. "Really?!"

"My Dad talked about Port a bit before I started at Beacon, and even a bit whilst I'm still here when me and Yang go home for the holidays; he said how Port's as impressive in battle as his moustache isn't. Port doesn't fight, he hunts; sure, he hunts well, but he hunts Grimm - beings with no remorse, no strategy besides 'Run at them and hope'. Teachers are people with feelings and plans and I don't think he'd do well in a fight at all." Her Workbench Buddy (as Ruby so affectionately named them) slumped back in a huff, feeling let down and betrayed. "Sorry Fox..."

"So, who do you think _would_ win?" he snapped back at her, clearly in a bit of a huff.

"I mean, assuming we can't choice from anyone else because my answer would obviously be my Uncle Qrow because he's the best, I guess I'd be-" A sound echoed through the workshop, one that Ruby was all too familiar with. A Fire Dust explosion from the front of the school on someone's first day... ' _Oh yeah, the First Years are going to be here soon. Maybe they're already here. I can't wait to see the-_ ' This time, the sound was much louder and more powerful, strong enough to be felt through the floor. Acting on instinct, everyone in the shop grabbed the weapons they were all working on and left towards the sound. A third explosion brought them into a run, there's no way this was an accident.

This was an attack.

* * *

Okay, I'm curious, who do _you_ think would win in the fight? Rules are: there are no rules! Okay, I lied. The fight lasts for 1 hour. Killing is allowed, but only after the first 20 minutes. The fight happens in the real world, but one where no consequences of repercussions come of the fight (imagine, if you will, the Mirror Dimension from 'Doctor Strange' - a place that looks exactly like our own but those with understanding of the mystic arts could manipulate it - but no one here _can_ manipulate it, so it's just a place where they can battle unabated. Let's just call their battleground a Pocket Dimension) It is not a perma-death, they will return to the land of the living once the time is up and the winner is announced. Contestants are:

\- Professor Ozpin

\- Glynda Goodwitch

\- Peter Port

\- Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck

\- Dorothy Gale, an OC Dust Studies Professor. She wields two chain whips that are stored on her arms as bracelets that can be used with Dust for devastating attacks. Her clothing is also mostly Dust woven material because of how much of the stuff she uses in battle, to the point where she is almost reliant on it to function as a warrior.

Give me your thoughts on the matter, be great to hear what y'all think!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	45. Chequered Morals

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Seeing all the First Years piling into the school from the airships brought a smile to Neo's face. There were few times that last year's First Years - now Second Years - made her smile, in part due to the fact that as someone 10 years their senior they were just annoying most of the time. Their enthusiasm was unmatched, always eager to learn, eager to progress and better themselves. The lessons she'd had with them every now and again were purely business at the start, but as time went on she relaxed in them, to the point some even became somewhat enjoyable at times. Most of the teachers gave her an assessment to complete or essay to write, then told her to go on her way to hand in at the same time as everyone else, gathering notes from her fellow teammates who had completed the lessons and tasks previously. Other lessons required her attendance due to their more practical nature, those being Dust Lessons with Professor Gale and Combat Classes with Professor Goodwitch.

It's how Neo and Glynda became close friends, what with the ice cream girl's age being much closer to hers than the rest of the class and their affinity for toying with their opponents. Even though Neo was told by the crop wielder that she didn't _need_ to attend these extra lessons because of her many years of practical application of her fighting, she attended anyway. That was another thing that made Glynda draw a liking to her; no one ever voluntarily came to more of her lessons than they needed to. It was tough on her - cramming essentially three years' worth of work and exams over multiple subjects into little over one third of that time. The caped blonde was so concerned about the mute overworking herself and smiling as she was hit, beaten and mentally broken in her classes that she had wanted her to confirm that she most definitely wasn't a masochist. She wasn't... sort of. Low-level, maybe.

But being in these classes with them meant she made a few friends and got used to them. There was a team in that year, Harlequin (HLQN), who she got on with extremely well. All four of them - especially Quentin Patterson, the only male in the group - had impeccable fashion taste and a knack for combining colours. She remembered back near the Festive Season in her Third Year when she and Fox had a special treat for the team that they immensely enjoyed.

* * *

"It's not too far away," Fox explained to Nylan, the youngest, shyest and easily most irritable of the four, "I promise." Fox had found out through Neo that Nylan Gepard came from a very poor background, even for a Faunus like herself. Whilst her and her Father's Faunus kin were kinder to her, a select few individuals still shunned her for her half-breed heritage and shunned her Father for mating with a human; fortunately, none of the Faunus in high ranking positions within her village thought poorly of them. Being a Cheetah Faunus, one of the rarest kinds of Faunus out there, didn't help her unease. When her Great-Great Grandparents first met, they mentioned how both of their parents got lucky - depending on who you asked - that their offspring produced Cheetah Faunus', due to its extremely high recessive nature. When they found each other, they knew they'd need to produce children to keep this rare lineage going. So, they did. But now _her_ Father not only produced a girl but a half-breed that wouldn't potentially carry the gene forward, she was made to feel horrible.

But being part Cheetah had its perks. None of her other friends had skin quite like hers; it was adorned with patchy brown spots that, against her lightly tanned skin, stood out a fair amount. When she was younger, she used makeup to cover them up. Now, she'd embraced them as part of her. Neo had a huge part to play in that. She divulged the information to HLQN that she used to be an assassin for hire, and so she did very bad things that looking back on she really isn't proud of. She also mentioned how she used to be able to talk when she was little, but a disease she has reacted negatively to the treatment and in its wake destroyed her vocal chords. The mute explained how, whilst one of those things was the result of was a conscious choice she made, the other was not. No matter what she would or could have done, it was going to happen to her and how she was now was the result of that. This was the same for Nylan.

Being part Cheetah also gifted her with a natural edge in terms of land speed. They did a fitness test soon after arriving and she was by far the fastest in the year. What really added insult to injury, according to her teammate Lulu, was that she wasn't even trying first time around. As the speedy boys sprinted as hard and as fast as they could, augmenting each step with their Aura to push their legs harder and faster than they could ever do normally, Nylan was running along at a fairly casual speed for her and always remaining out of their reach. She was asked to do it properly as everyone else did so they could get a proper indication of how fast she could go, and her speed over that short distance blew all previous attempts and records out of the water. Everyone else topped off at 11.5m/s, she ran an easy 15.3m/s - and even then, she admitted to holding back. That still put her ahead of a charging Ursa or a Beowolf Alpha, so her lack of fighting prowess in comparison to her teammates made her bait more often than not. She didn't mind too much.

Nylan shrugged at Fox's response, her mousey brown shoulder length hair bobbing slightly as she did so. Yellow eyes glanced over at her leader, Viola Houndstooth - whose surname makes up the 'H' in Team HLQN - in a slight panic, wanting a comfort blanket of some sort in hearing her say words of encouragement. The team leader simply sighed with a smile.

"Nylan, you know you can trust Fox. He's not going to hurt you."

"Yeah, it's just... I don't know." The team leader giggled to herself before quickly closing the gap between the two and catching the Faunus in a surprise side hug, frightening a brief scream out of her.

"Nylan, Nylan, Nylan. What are we going to do with you?" she mused. The two girls in the hug were partners at Beacon and they were polar opposites of one another in near enough any and every way you could think of. Nylan's mousey brown hair was shoulder length and naturally a little messy. Viola's came down to midway down her back and was often done in a style usually a braid of some sort. It made her hair form cool patterns depending on how she did it, because her hair was snow white with regular strips of black throughout. In a French braid, for example, her hair looked a lot like black and white harlequin pattern. That's how the team got their name; she was wearing her hair that way on initiation and Ozpin was having trouble otherwise finding a team that consisted of V|H, N|G, Q|P and L|P. Viola's weapons were a pair of large barrelled shotguns that could combine together to make a slow but hard-hitting hammer, her preferred state, whereas Nylan had a medium lengthed, dual-edged sword meant for quicker strikes that parted down the middle to reveal the barrel of a machine pistol for her ranged attacks. Nylan's yellow eyes that occasionally turned to slits when her semblance activated or frustrated and Viola's light grey orbs that almost sparkled when she used her semblance. The list could go on.

"Not only will Neo make sure that Fox doesn't harm you, I will _personally_ ensure that no harm comes of you." Viola was physically and sexually attracted to everyone, she didn't discriminate. The current apple of her eye? Her partner, Nylan. That made the entire scenario much more awkward than it maybe needed to be, because Nylan believed she felt no sexual attraction, nor any real physical attraction, to anyone. She did like playing up the fact she was Viola's crush though, as at least everyone on their team and their neighbouring team knew of the crush so it wasn't a secret between them. Nylan would occasionally hug back and make every one she did last just that little bit longer. She would walk close to Viola, _very_ close even, every now and again but she'd always try to keep her arms looked by her side and her hands planted firmly and deep in her trouser pockets to prevent her team leader from grabbing her hand or holding her arm and giving her a false sense of hope. She'd even given the black-and-white themed girl a couple of pecks on the cheek just to see what reaction it got. Usually, it was a strong blush that stained the leader's pale complexion a strong red hue. It was good for Nylan to see that every once in a while, considering how naturally shy she was in complete contrast to her partner, the fun-loving, outgoing person she was.

"Thank you Vi, I appreciate the sentiment." The mousey haired girl shot her partner a smile that she returned with a grin and giggle.

"Are you two done flirting yet?" Lulu teased, breaking their moment. Lulu Persimmon was the tallest of the team, but not by much, standing only 2" taller than Quentin and Viola at 5' 8". She wasn't bossy, but she had a slight impatient streak that the others tended to test a bit, much to her annoyance. Her outfit consisted of a very simple pair of black boots, dark grey leggings with her emblem sewn into the material just above her knees in her family colour of persimmon orange, equally dark grey shorts, an orange t-shirt that sat underneath a cropped, short sleeved blouse in a lighter shade of grey than her lower half. On her back, she wore her weapons - a pair of Chakram, one large, the other smaller. The larger one had an inside handle section going through the middle of it, so it could form a shield when she needed it to using her semblance. Her other weapon could compact slightly to just about the size of a bracelet, which she often let rest over her arm and, again using her semblance, could make it into an energy gauntlet to fire off bolts of energy at opponents. Lulu's semblance lets her manipulate energy, mostly from her own extremely high pool of Aura but in extreme situations she could strain a little more and draw from the immediate vicinity. Used defensively it created a nigh impenetrable energy shield, which she can only project over her Chakram. Offensively, the energy bolts impacted with a decent amount of force. Seeing her teammates glare at her, she knew she may have made a slight mistake.

"We are not dating," Nylan growled, her irises turning to slits, "we never have been and we never will. Why is that such a hard concept for you to grasp? Stop it with the attacks."

"We won't stop," Quentin jumped in, "until you confess to all of us your undying and secret love for our glorious team leader!" He finished before his partner could stop him, and that earned him glares from his grey eyed team leader after she saw her own partner's eyes shoot open in fear, pupils returning to normal and arms wrapping around her own body to protect herself.

"You _know_ that Nylan's not very self-confident and doesn't like things about her discussed unless she brings them up to us." Quentin already felt bad, but Viola wasn't stopping there. "And then to shout basically something like that out so loud even Menagerie heard it about her; imagine what a mental train wreck her mind must be right now. Think before you act next time Quentin." He lowered his head in shame.

"Will you all stop bickering back there," Fox spoke, having been listening to but not interrupting their conversation, "else we won't be taking you to Neo's Grotto."

"'Neo's Grotto'? Why's it called that?"

"Because Lulu, Neo was the first of us to find this place, so therefore it's Neo's Grotto. It's not the actual name, but that's what we call it." The older couple walked around the corner and spotted the building at the end of the next street. "Speak of the Devil. Ladies and Quentin," that brought a smile to Nylan's face, which in turn brightened Viola's mood. "I present to you; Neo's Grotto." The scarred young man gestured with an open hand towards the building he'd become so familiar with since dating Neo. Team HLQN stared down the street at the building without words.

"That's it?" came the eventual reply from the blond boy.

"Wow, underwhelmed much." - ' _And this is_ _ **definitely**_ _the right team?_ '

' _Trust me, when they get inside you'll see._ '

' _Whatever you say hun._ ' - "Come on then, let's get you inside. Your attitudes will change completely, I guarantee it."

True enough, when they entered the building their eyes grew in wonder. Rows upon rows of different materials and fabrics over multiple floors. It was a gold mine for the fashion focussed First Year team.

"Pretty good, huh?" Nylan was the one to speak on behalf of everyone else, tears of joy in her eyes.

"This is amazing!"

* * *

Team HLQN were Neo's favourite team in that year.

"What're you thinking about Neo?" Coco queried, breaking the mute's concentration.

" _Sorry, zoned out. I was just thinking about Team HLQN._ " A smile ghosted its way onto the smaller woman's lips, which caught Coco's eyes and made her smile too.

"They're the now-Second Year Team you got on with really well, aren't they?" She nodded. "The same ones you were really worried about when they didn't return from their break near the end of the year for an extra week, and when they did they were all slow and drained?" The smile faded, replaced by a frown, but the nod remained. "The ones who went to 'The Four Season Springs' Resort for their break, the same place we're going to?" The response from Neo was slow, but it eventually came. Another nod.

" _That Grimm might be it, the reason they came back looking like zombies for three weeks. Even now, they're not what they used to be, and that was May time._ " In a moment that shocked both her and the woman she was with, Neo's breaths became short and sharp, sweat formed on her head and she started to feel really, uncomfortably warm. She was hyperventilating, and that worried Coco something rotten. Velvet always used to hyperventilate when she was overly worked up, she still did at times, but it was still cause for comfort and security. What made this worse for the fashionista was that this was one of the few sounds she'd ever heard Neo making, and the sound of a woman she'd never heard speak before nearly choking on her own breaths was horrifying.

"Neo, calm down." The fashionista wrapped her arms around her friend, getting her in a comfortable yet firm hug, "you'll be fine. Breathe slowly. Focus on my voice. Focus on the hug." The breathing slowed and grew less intense with every passing moment. But then the hug tightened on Neo's end and Coco felt slight hiccups in her chest. Neo was sobbing silently into her chest. She kissed the top of her head and started swaying slightly, comforting the ice cream girl. When that subsided, she pushed her away to look into her eyes; they were red from that sudden spout of crying and her irises were still vanilla white from fear. "If it is that Grimm, we're going to get it. I promise." The woman nodded with conviction, returning to the hug.

* * *

'What do you mean I can't see them?' she'd scribbled on the paper provided to her. The Nurse looked uncomfortable discussing with the woman.

"It's their condition madam. We fear it's too dangerous to let visitors in there." The tri coloured woman slumped back in the chair crossing her arms in frustration like a child three times younger than her current age. She didn't think it was fair; they were her friends, why couldn't she see them. She sat up again and started angrily scribbling something to say to him.

'Can I at least know how long they're going to be in here?'

"Patient confidentiality states that I physically cannot, under any circumstances, reveal any more information than I already have."

' _Well that's some bullshit..._ ' she thought to herself, her look to the Nurse more than enough for him to realise that was what she was implying. ' _Then again..._ ' Heterochromatic eyes looked him up and down, sussing out the uniform fairly quickly and easily. ' _A day's work, at best. And I have classes._ ' Her idea held less and less merit as each thought passed, that was until he realised something. ' _A day's work, at best... on my own._ ' She stood, content on losing this battle. She bowed as her way of thanking them, then left the Infirmary at Beacon and near enough made a beeline for her favourite shop in Vale.

 **~000~**

"There she is, the little Superwoman." Still as excited as ever to see their favourite customer walking through the door. He was out of his usual practical blue jeans for the first time since she'd started frequenting the place as instead he was favouring a pair of beige chinos and a strong pink top. "What's on today's wish list then?"

" _Well, I'm in need of a Nurse's uniform; and before you ask, no, it is not for_ _ **that**_ _._ " The man giggled, then gestured for her to carry on. " _You know I used to be involved in some less than amicable lines of work, one of which was breaking and entering?_ "

"Mm hmm."

" _There's some friends of mine currently in the Infirmary back at Beacon. The Secure Ward, because of where they went and what happened to them as a result. I don't know what happened, and I don't like that. So, I'm going to go in there and find out myself, posing as one of the Nurses attending to them, then staying after the officials had gone and talk with my friends properly._ "

"Someone's put a bit of thought behind this, haven't they?" She shrugged at his statement, but continued past it.

" _The problem now is that I have classes, so making time is reduced to weekends_ _ **if**_ _my team aren't doing anything - which most of the time, we are. So, I was wondering if I could call upon your fine team to aid me?_ "

"Oh, Neo." The man spoke with a hushed voice; but not out of secrecy, instead because it was the best way he could think of to keep his feelings of happiness and pride in check. It didn't work well, but it helped to a small degree. "We would be honoured to help you." He called his workforce together, save the handful of them that were serving at the moment. "Alright listen up. Neo here is in need of our help. She's in need of an accurate Nurse or even Doctor's outfit from Beacon Infirmary, but she doesn't have the time to do it alone. If we all pool together, we can get this done for her quick. Get as much as you can done before we shut, then make sure those who are replacing you on night duty know what they're doing." Neo showed them all a photo of a Nurse's uniform from the Infirmary and they started gathering materials straight away and getting to work. "There you are hun, all set in motion. I'll get the nocturnal workers to keep going at this as well, we should have this done by this time tomorrow."

" _Thank you, I owe you big time._ " The man scoffed and held up his hand in protest.

"Neo sweetie, you've brought so many customers here yourself that our business has doubled based on your friends alone. You've done more than enough for us."

 **~000~**

 **Message from** ** _Dart's Darting Shop_** **\- 'Hi Neo. Just thought I'd let you know that we got it all sorted for you. The night shift workers revelled the challenge but stepped up to it with great enthusiasm. Even used some bootleg Six Shard machines (shh, don't tell) Come find me, or if you need it earlier and I'm not there, one of the Nocs will either let you in or give it to you.'**

Neo was thoroughly impressed, she didn't expect the third thing she saw when she woke up - first being her boyfriend sleeping beside her and second being the time, 5:49 - to be a message on her Scroll saying that it was already done, and judging by the time it was sent, had been for the past hour and a quarter. It's why she loved that place; fast service, a good turnaround, great customer service and they were the first place besides home that treated Neo like family; they didn't care about background, they wanted their customers happy.

' _Fox?_ '

' _Yeah?_ ' he mentally mumbled, still not completely awake but enough so to hold a simple conversation.

' _I'm heading out, need to get something. I'll write a note._ ' Her lips moved to place a kiss on his own, causing him to stir a little more and his eyes to part. ' _Love you._ '

The young man smiled, then whispered back, "Love you too."

' _Don't get up. Just go back to sleep, I'll be fine._ ' Doing as he was told (she loved it when he did that so willingly), dark copper brown eyes stole one final look at the woman laying next to him before they returned him to the land of dreams. The woman had a quick wash in the sink just so she didn't wake anyone up with the sound of a running shower, got changed into her uniform but threw her normal jacket on over it all to at least partially cover the easily identifiable clothing and headed out to Vale to grab her disguise.

She was trying to be good, she really was. Heck, she was having good amounts of fun being good and she was darn good at it too.

But one thing she was ever so slightly better at due to many more years of practice was being bad.

* * *

Yes, Neo's grown up from the person she once was that lied, cheated, stole and killed all the time, but that doesn't mean she can't dabble in some mischief from time to time.

Team HLQN all have their names based around patterns, materials used in designing and creating or things created themselves:

\- **Houndstooth** is a broken check pattern normally using black and white  
\- **Lulu Persimmon** can be shortened (by taking half of her first name and the last initial of her surname) to loop, a word synonymous with patterns  
\- **Quentin** I derived from quilt, but also **Patterson** is close to the word pattern  
\- **Nylan** is based on the word nylon, a silky material used in things like umbrellas  
\- **Harlequin** itself is a looping pattern of diamond shapes, normally in black and white, but also red can often be substituted in for either of those colours or added in as a third.

Hope you are all still enjoying the story, it's a blast to write. And please, leave a review. Reviews help authors know what you like and what you think of their work. Admittedly, hearing nothing isn't always a bad thing, but every once in a while I think you should leave just a thought. But hey, that's just me.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	46. Lights Out

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

She didn't draw suspicion at all, which was good. Whilst she was a fair amount shorter than the other staff in the Infirmary, they were all otherwise occupied to notice her. Plus, she wasn't in her usual attire. After classes had finished for the day, she excused herself from her team and got changed, even donning her jet black haired 'Cherry' wig and swapping her eyes to emerald green. She even put on a bit more makeup to try and disguise the fact that she wasn't who she said she was. But once the four's check-ups were completed for the day and they were left alone in the room, Neo made her way in, looking like she had important business to discuss with them.

"Sorry Nurse, we've already been spoken to this evening." The member of staff paid no attention to Viola's polite protest, as she kept flicking through her "notes" and jotting down something on the spare paper she was carrying with her.

"She said," her partner added, her yellow eyes partially slit when "Nurse Cherry's" emerald green eyes glanced over at her, "we've already been seen. We want sleep and privacy."

"I bet you do" came the weaker but still as sassy voice of Lulu from the bed furthest from the door. "Too bad we're all sharing a room, eh Nylan?"

"Fuck off, Lu-P." Lu-P. was the Faunus girl's nickname for her teammate. In the Cheetah's own words, 'With a name like 'Lulu Persimmon', your parents were wishing for you to be bullied in later life. But admittedly, it goes well with your theme of circles as well'. With a smile she tried to keep to herself, the mute woman strode forward to stand by the bedside of the team leader. "Don't touch her" the Faunus threatened, her eyes fully slit now. Neo shook her head and wrote some more on the paper. When she leaned down to present her notes to the harlequin patterned leader, Nylan was up, out of her bed and protecting Viola instinctively, a menacing growl coming from her. Most Faunus don't like their more animalistic natures showing, like Blake with her affinity for yarn or Velvet's habit of deciding to binky whenever something truly amazing happens to her; others like Sun embrace it, not caring that the world knows he has a thing for bananas and banana flavoured basically-everything. Nylan fell under the roof of the first category. But in situations like this, she didn't care. If anything, she was more than happy to show off her Faunus heritage, especially if it meant protecting Viola. Neo recoiled slightly at the display of protection, then smugly smiled as she turned her paper around.

'I wasn't expecting you to be this bad, but Nylan's made me think that you're on the road to recovery.'

"Neo?" All three other people in the room perked up at the mere mention of her name. The woman was many years their senior yet treated them no different and genuinely so, it was a relieving sensation from the professors in classes. In response to the question, Neo blinked hard, bringing her eyes back to unmistakeable Heterochromatic pink and brown. "Neo!" Quentin moved slightly in his bed to face the rest of his team, the fact he was the only male and the fact he seemed to have fared the worst for wear out of everyone made him a little slower than usual. He turned around in time to see his spotted teammate nearly throwing their older friend off the bed in a powerful hug. "What're you doing here? We're not supposed to have visitors." The mute smirked and started writing down her response on the piece of paper two from the front, keeping the first two reserved for authentic looking documents.

'Do I look like a visitor? I broke the rules to see you, so if you don't tell I won't get in trouble. I was just worried about you.' She saw Quentin looking at them, still partially spaced out and in pretty bad shape in comparison to everyone else, his skin - whilst regaining its natural colouring - still carried the ghostly blue-grey hue they sported when they arrived back at Beacon after their break. She pointed at him, then gave him a thumbs up with furrowed eyebrows; Universal Sign for "You alright?"

"I'm coping." His everyday upbeat, lively voice and attitude were gone, replaced by small responses that seemed painful to say, even given their small size. His voice was gravelly and about half an octave down from what it usually was; even considering all that his voice still sounded ever so slightly feminine in pitch.

"Why are you here?" Lulu spoke, reiterating her teammate's previous question, "There has to be a reason." As Neo started writing down her response, the orange themed girl continued. "You've shown how patient you are, so you _could have_ very easily waited until we could have visitors before seeing us. Sneaking in to see us early, you want something from us." As she was finishing off writing, she nodded, confirming the Chakram wielder's suspicions. When she was done, she showed those around her the response she'd written.

'What happened? I need to know everything I can: what, when, who, why?'

"Everything?" Viola asked. Neo's answer to that was to underline very heavily a single word on the paper, making it very clear what she was thinking.

'...everything...'

"Okay..." she looked round at the others in the room, getting nods of approval from each of them. Her eyes finished their rounds on Nylan, who was still on her bed but was now leaning back and resting one hand on her partner's knee through the covers. The Faunus gave a small smile, knowing what she was doing, and Viola's lips ghosted a smirk so no one else could notice before she shifted herself up to a sitting position, forcing Nylan to move. She didn't go very far though, just to the chair on the far side of Viola's bed, even moving it closer to the bed. "We went to 'The Four Season Springs' Resort over our break; we'd left late on our last day of semester, arrived early to mid-morning on Saturday, enjoy ourselves Saturday through to Friday, pack up and leave the following Saturday morning and be back at Beacon for Saturday night. That was the plan, at least. It was on course to do that, right up until Wednesday afternoon. We went up to the 'Summer Spirit' Spring for a little bit of relaxing in the natural spring, we were in there for what could have been no more than five minutes before the water started darkening." Neo's eyebrow arched, she'd never heard of that happening before.

"And when she says darkening, she means it" Quentin weakly added.

"Dark, dirty black water..." Lulu mentioned with a shudder.

"Grimm black" Nylan confirmed. Both of her eyebrows were raised now and her irises turned white.

' _There's a Grimm that can do that?_ ' she thought to herself, skin on her palms getting slightly wet from sudden fear. Viola continued on.

"We try to leave, but all of us find that there's something attached to our legs, like a hand. We can't see anything, so it might have been. Lulu was the only one out of the water at the time, but when she tried to run a tentacle of what looked like pure water with a human hand at the end grabbed her ankle and pulled her into the spring. None of us could move. That's all I could remember before we regained consciousness and stumbled back to our rooms."

"I remember a bit more. After what seemed like a couple of minutes of nothing, I felt like I was being suspended in the air. In that state of not-quite consciousness, I'm sure I heard voices and weapons... ours..." The Faunus' right fist clenched hard, but it relaxed soon after her partner did something that none of the other three present could see. Viola smiled at her again, this time not trying to hide it. Neither was Nylan.

"Turns out, we were out for nearly 12 days with no indication of where we went except a very small trace of Lulu's blood where she was first grabbed and pulled over, bashing her nose against the floor a bit."

"No broken nose for me, thank Oum" she mentioned with a sigh, "but I didn't get my Aura up at the exact right time to prevent a little bit of blood coming out."

"We didn't feel right... we still don't, and poor Quentin got it worst of all."

"I tried to fight it" he admitted, followed by a couple of hacking coughs. "Don't do that." The three younger girls all looked around at each other, confused by what he said.

"Quen, why'd you-"

"She's gonna go there." They all looked at Neo, who silently sighed and nodded. "Told you."

"Neo, you can't. We barely came out alive, and I think that's because it _wanted_ us to get out!" The woman stood her ground, her eyes swapping from pink and brown to brown and pink - the sign she was willing to fight. It took a moment, but eventually they realised that she wouldn't be deterred. Nylan's hand let go of Viola's from under the bed sheets as they both went to hug Neo.

"Promise us," Viola whispered through growing tears, "that you won't die. You can't die, and I won't _let you_ die for us!" The harlequin patterned girl moved back from her hug to look the more experienced woman dead in the eyes. "Promise us, promise _me_." Neo raised her left hand and drew a cross over her heart with her right; an expert didn't need to tell you what that meant. Neo went to hug Lulu, who wore a smile not seen by many as she did. After her, she finished her hugging rounds by going to Quentin.

"Be careful." She nodded at his request, then turned back to the two girls by the bed. She pointed at Nylan, then at her bed.

"Yeah, I know." Before she went, she grabbed behind her partner's head and pulled her up so that their foreheads touched. Viola's hand reached up and mirrored the hold on Nylan. Both girls remained there for a few seconds, smiling at the moment of contact they were sharing. Neo, confused at this, looked to Lulu, who nodded with another smile. The two partners were very close, practically an item. She'd call it 'dating', but Nylan's aversion to the word and uncertainty over whether this is genuine or fleeting meant that they were avoiding it until they knew for a fact. When they broke from that, Nylan made her way back to her own bed and lay down again as if she'd never left the uncomfortable mattress at all. Neo briefly waved goodbye, then proceeded to shatter into a thousand, glass like pieces.

* * *

" _They were drained, even their Aura's seemed off kilter_ " Neo signed to Coco. " _It was like part of them was missing. Hell, it still feels like that now. I asked Fox to check as well, they're not all there - Aura wise._ " Her little joke at her friends' expense brought an unwarranted but not completely unwanted smile to her face.

"Neo, you're such a selfless creature. I know that, you know that and they know that. You're doing what you feel is right, and you have been looking for ways to do something. No offence, but it's why we were so busy doing things over the summer break with you. And why we've never taken up anything even in the quadrant of South-Eastern Vale since then." The ice cream girl looked at her caramel coloured companion with a mixture of betrayal and confusion. "We knew, probably the very same week you went to see HLQN. Both you and Fox forget sometimes that the other can hear your thoughts."

' _Shit... does he know about..._ '

"Yup, even those ones."

' _SHIT!_ ' She blushed hard, her face matching the colour of her own hair, then surpassing that to match the colours of the pancake loving one from JNPR's skirt, then it even passed that and rivalled the hair colour of the Amazonian demi-Goddess that was Pyrrha Nikos.

"He heard you mentally muttering about going to it multiple times that week, said nothing to you and told the rest of us. We then made sure to only get assigned missions in the remaining three quadrants for the rest of the year. We couldn't let you go killing yourself for revenge, even on a Grimm. Team CFVYN wouldn't be the same without you." Coco was trying to be sincere, but Neo raised an eyebrow wondering if Coco realised her mistake. She didn't, so she sought to correct that.

"CFVYN without me goes back to being Team CFVY." There was a moment of silence as the cogs inside the fashionista's head ticked away. When they all aligned, Neo saw expressive eyes shoot her a defeated look from behind designer shades.

"Touché. _But..._ Fox goes back to being single because his teammate and lover decided she wanted to sacrifice herself facing off against a Grimm that, whilst it did have the element of surprise and I suppose they _were_ unarmed, managed to knockout and utterly decimate a highly praised and equally highly skilled First Year team of Huntresses and a Huntsman-in-Training in less than 60 seconds." Sunglasses were now lowered so that eyes were unobstructed from view. The smaller woman saw her leader's eyes were looking at her like they both already knew the answer but one of them (her) didn't know it yet. "And you think you can do what four of the couldn't, alone?" They stared waiting for the other to break first.

Both combatants in this game of patience were well versed in endurance. Neo had over 9 year's worth of sexual encounters with men, women, Faunus and Huntsmen that all proved to be a great endurance workout. Coco only had 2 year's worth, but she had Velvet: a Rabbit Faunus that would make anyone who wanted to know question if she really was a Faunus or a living, breathing machine with how feisty she could be at times. If Fox and Neo's first date was anything to go by, they were going at it literally all day, and they only stopped because they knew that they'd be back to the dorm soon. They stared, blinking once or twice each but never breaking eye contact, never flinching.

Neo's eyes guiltily drifted to the space behind Coco only for a brief moment. 'Brief moments' were enough for the fashionista. "Yeah, see I'm calling bullshit on that." Heterochromia blinked to brown as she lowered her head in admittance. She _was_ thinking about going at it alone, if only because other than Fox to a much lesser extent, she was the only one who was friends with HLQN from CFVYN. "You can't win against that thing."

" _I won't know until I try._ "

"Until _we_ try, Neo. Why'd you think we, specifically you, got first pick on all the missions for the start of the year?" The mute now looked up again, hurt was the dominant emotion this time. "Ozpin and Goodwitch spoke to me, as per normal, for my Team Leader One to Technically-One-But-Because-Goodwitch-Is-Always-There-It's-Two before the start of the term. In it, I said that you were almost running away to tackle that task on your own, and that there had to be a way to get you there a) Safely and b) With your team. So, they added the mission to the choice pool and gave you first refusal."

" _What, so aren't we good enough to do it alone? We need 'Ozpin's Seal of Approval' to do the thing that I've wanted to do since May?!_ "

"Wha... no! No, of course not. But you need us there Neo. We're a team. We do this together. _And_ we get paid to do it."

' _Oh yeah, 120,000 Lien. Neat._ '

 **BOOM!**

' _Not neat._ '

"Okay, what? Why are there explosions going off on Campus? How can we be having accidents with Dust already; we haven't even started the year yet, what the-"

 **BOOM!**

"Those aren't accidents. Neo, let's go!" The two young women ran to the source of the explosions and the now sudden screaming of First Years running to save themselves, pushing past them to get to the commotion. The gunner was certain she heard something clink nearby. She glanced down and saw a metal ball with red dust glowing inside it ever brighter, threatening to explode any se-

 **BOOM!**

The force sent both girls flying backwards, Coco taking a much larger hit on her Aura than Neo, who sadly took more of a physical hit having not readied her Aura against it. Her clothes were scorched and her ears rang, her hands clutched over them in an ultimately pointless effort to rid her of the high-pitched sound in her ears. Coco crawled towards Neo to try and comfort her and get her on her feet again as soon as she could, but a black shoe cracked her across the face and knocked her senses out of whack, rendering her useless. Neo strained to open her eyes against the pain in her ears. She saw the shoes, clean white trousers and the body of her teammate laying motionless on the ground near her. Having neither heard anything nor seen anything happen, her mind jumped to the worst possible conclusion. Her eyes were streaming tears within a second, reaching out to grab what she thought was the lifeless hand of her friend, only to have a metal object jab her in the stomach, forcing her to contract again to protect her core muscles that were currently in heaps of pain. The flat end was replaced by a hook the grabbed her arm and moved it so she was laying flat on her back, facing the attacker. That's when she saw it.

Black shoes.

White trousers.

A stick with a flat and hooked end. More specifically, a cane.

And looking up now; a bowler hat.

"Mornin' Neo." And that was the last thing she heard before she was clubbed so hard in the face with the cane that she fell unconscious.

* * *

I don't forget, I just don't use for a long while.

It wouldn't be fun without a little drama in their lives, would it? The next chapter in the team's life is starting off, and I hope you can all be with me to go through it all.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	47. A New Low for the White Fang

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The crescendos and subsequent diminuendos of the school's warning siren echoed throughout the grounds. Many of the Fresh-off-the-Ship First Years were running towards the large structure in the middle of their new home for the next 4 years, providing they made it through this ordeal. Older students and Huntsmen-turned-Teachers were running to attend to the injured and scared.

"Children," Goodwitch shouted over the ensuing chaos, "make your way to the main dining hall and await further instructions there. Do not fight, just stay there." A large majority complied on that first command. A few foolhardy First Years who complained about not getting to fight were told plain and simply, "I haven't seen you fight. Therefore, I'm not risking it." The one idiot who _still_ didn't get the message was promptly thrown via Goodwitch's semblance towards the hall with a sly half-smirk and a menacing "Anyone else?" to those who were wanting to fight. Everyone complied with what she said after that.

Team FVY and Ruby were on the scene promptly, what with where they were being situated fairly close to the front of the school grounds. Once the silver eyed brunette had called her locker to her, opening it to reveal her precious Crescent Rose, her cloak unwrapped from around her waist and now lay over her shoulders like a cloak should. Ruby was ready for action.

"Now's gonna be as good a time as any to test out your new upgrades Fox," Ruby mentioned with a proud smile on her face, "just be careful of anything going wrong and tell me afterwards."

"Right!" was all the copper haired boy said as he unfolded his weapons from their compact state to their shiny new aggressive mode. There wasn't much different in Fox's eyes, but he knew what Ruby was like so he wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of things that come out of nowhere during this battle. As two more lockers landed besides her own revealing a Greatsword and a Camera, Velvet placed a hand on Ruby's shoulder.

"We're ready to follow your lead Ruby."

"I... uh... what?"

"You're a team leader, and it won't always be your own team you need to be leading. You're call the shots for us Rubes."

"Uh..."

"Or if you're worried about that," came the voice of her long-time friend at Beacon and fellow team leader Jaune, followed closely by his own team, "we can always share the responsibility." The smile that came across her face made it clear that she was happy with the preposition. It faded momentarily when she finally registered that there were only five Third Year students there, herself included.

"Any idea where the rest of my team is?"

"I am sure they will be here in good time," the current resident ninja assured.

"We wouldn't want you overloading yourself as well, trying to lead more people than you can cope with," Pyrrha added.

"Yeah..." Ruby muttered, rubbing the back of her head. Battle cries rang from down the way as people started charging and attacking the students that had fallen behind in the confusion, bringing her back to reality. "Who wants a boost in?"

"Think you can manage?"

"Aw man..." She cursed at herself for offering when Yatsuhashi, of all people, made his way towards her. She breathed heavily, readying herself for the strain this was most likely going to cause on her body before the fighting had even begun. He got into position, then after one final breath Ruby swung her scythe in such a way that it caught him and flung him towards the fighting, firing a few rounds as well to aid the swing.

' _Huh,_ ' she thought in surprise, ' _wasn't as bad as I th-_ ' The sudden wave of pain that shot up her left arm made her realise that it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, it was worse. "Why do I suggest things?" she whimpered to herself as she relocated her shoulder back to the correct spot inside her body and moved forward with the rest of them, fighting against losing consciousness and - to her own surprise - was currently winning.

The gentle giant soared through the air like a rocket, something he wasn't familiar with. Yatsuhashi could see lots from up here; the mass of First Year students running for cover, a solitary Bullhead flying away, and his team behind him when he looked the right way. He shifted his weight to better aim his trajectory, and when he spotted his targets - a large group of charging White Fang members - he aimed his landing accordingly. As Ruby, JNPR, Velvet and Fox were charging in themselves for the attack, the White Fang members saw their advances and a small group started splintering off to combat them. They didn't get very far when a 7ft tall hulking mass of a man came crashing down in the middle of them all, sending upwards of 20 people flying from the shockwave. The students took that as an opportunity to split up and clear out this group.

"Jaune! Lead JNPR, take half and do your own thing. Yatsuhashi, Fox; stay close to each other. Velvet, with me!"

"Pyr, go with Ren. Nora, care to join me?"

"Alright, let's get to smashing!" There was no questioning, there was only action.

Despite not being partners, Ren and Pyrrha fought as if they'd been together for most of their lives. They ran towards a couple of members who carried weapons, firing them wildly at the Ninja and Amazon as they approached. Pyrrha, being the one in front, ducked down behind Akoúo̱ and bore the brunt of the bullets coming in as Ren vaulted over her and used the swinging momentum to bring his feet around and crash into the gun wielding member who stood furthest forward, knocking him into everyone else behind him. Feeling and hearing the rain of bullets disappear against her shield, the woman stood up and threw her shield like a discus at one member, most likely a monkey Faunus considering the tail, that crashed into the back of him and threw him straight to the floor either unconscious or in serious pain. Pyrrha called Akoúo̱ back to her with her semblance, but hearing a pair of feet approaching from behind she dodged out of the way of her shield returning, flying past her own head and coming firmly into contact with the head of the approaching Lizard Faunus.

Ruby and Velvet was currently engaged with a large group of White Fang who had taken it upon themselves to gang up on the two smallest members of the student group. The pair were by no means incapable of fighting - in fact they were both considered one of the strongest 10 fighters in their respective Years - but even they had trouble dealing with an onslaught of nearly 20 White Fang members at once. Ruby blocked the punch of one, but as she went to swing Crescent Rose to respond she was hit from behind by another. Velvet was on the defensive constantly, blocking and dodging as best she could in the ever shrinking circle that was their current battleground. Back to back, the young women looked at their attackers nervously - not at their skill, but at the sheer number that could easily overwhelm them if they tried, and they were trying.

"Hey!" came a familiar voice from behind the group. A few members turned around, only to have their bodies completely frozen by Ice Dust. "No one else goes _near_ my partner, got it?"

"Aww, you do care."

"Ruby! Now is not the time," Weiss snapped back, Myrtenaster already clashing against the knives that some members carried in shaky hands.

"Wait, if Weiss is here then where's-" The hooded woman was interrupted by the cries pain from White Fang as Yang and Blake came flying through the group with ferocity, trying their best to hit as many as they could on their way through.

"Miss me?" the blonde said, her signature grin plastered on her face.

"Sort of," her sister replied, "I missed Blake more." The grin was gone, replaced with a hurt expression.

"How could you?" She turned to Blake. "How could _you?_ " The Cat Faunus shrugged with a smirk, clearly having fun with this. The fun dissipated the second she recalled they weren't here to banter back and forth, the school was under attack by White Fang.

"What's the plan Ruby?" she asked facing outwards, initiating a four point defence that her partner, leader and fellow Faunus all joined.

"Do your own thing," she ordered in an effort to be as to-the-point as she could be, seeing some White Fang getting back up and looking pretty pissed off at them. "Stay together, stay close to us all. Fire anything drastic you plan to do through me first."

"Got it sis." Lilac eyes glanced backwards over her left shoulder towards Blake, whom she couldn't see but knew was there. "Wanna give the Mark another go Blakey?" Unseen by the brawler, the Faunus smirked and channelled her Aura through her Mark, making it glow. Yang's followed suit a moment after, understanding what that meant and acting on what the glow told them. They rushed off to fight as Velvet and Ruby stayed close together.

"Ruby, I can't feel Coco's Mark." The shake in her voice was enough to draw the scythe wielder away from the battle raging on around them to focus on the woman behind her.

"Velvet, it'll be-"

"No, I can _always_ feel her. Now I can't. I didn't realise until just now when the adrenaline rush died down and now I'm scared for her." She actively flared her Aura through the Mate's Mark on her shoulder, but got nothing in return. Her eyes started filling with tears and Ruby did her best to comfort her in the given situation.

"Velvet, please, focus on the now. Coco'll be fine, she's strong." Tears dried very fast and sadness was replaced with anger. Velvet no longer held back and she unloaded all her anger and frustration onto the unsuspecting members of The White Fang that got in her way.

Fox ran in to be side by side with his partner, who was holding his weapon over his shoulder and was currently waiting for a couple of White Fang members to stand back up. With a nod of their heads, they confirmed that they knew the game plan they were going for. There were five members in front of them; a deer Faunus, two wolves, a rhino and a koala Faunus. The rhino would be their biggest challenge, if only for the man's large size, naturally more armoured skin and probable tendency to charge at his opponents. One of the wolves was first up and without hesitation ran at the pair, shouting curses at them. In a foolish move, the White Fang member leapt at them to get a 'good vantage point' for his attack. Sadly for him, all it did was mean that his course was set and he could not change it, especially as he wanted to upon seeing the smaller of his two enemies calmly closing the gap between them and swinging round to deliver a left elbow to the face that could have been easily dodged were he planted firmly on the floor. I mean, the wolf Faunus was now, but he was also unconscious. The koala and second wolf Faunus ran at the pair of them, attacking almost in complete synchronisation with one another.

' _These three have never been in a fight before,_ ' Yatsuhashi thought to himself as the younger looking wolf boy swung wildly at him. He didn't have any fighting prowess, nor any skill - he was there, swinging away and hoping that a punch or kick would connect. Yatsuhashi dodged out of the way and knocked the back of his attacker's head, knocking the mask off. The young wolf turned and stared angrily at the student, who gasped at the revelation. The person he was fighting looked no older than 12. He was a kid. Amidst all the dodging, the towering student spun his weapon round so that the sharp edge was facing away; these kids didn't need to be killed because that's all they were, kids. As the boy came in again, the pommel of a Greatsword smacked him on the side of the head, knocking him out. Yatsuhashi called out to the red clad impromptu leader of their group.

"Ruby!" His deep and powerful bass voice carried across the vast distance it needed to travel with ease. The young woman landed a kick on the mouse Faunus she was fighting that knocked her down and out, then turned her attention to the source of the sound. "Non-lethal, they're children." Silver eyes widened, then ran to her recently defeated opponent and stripped the mask from her face. The girl she fought looked like she'd barely turned 10. The scythe wielder paled, then made an executive decision.

"Everyone, fall back! Group on Yatsu!" The 11 students did so, all facing one direction towards the demised, but still very sizable, wall of White Fang.

"Why'd you have to do that Ruby?" Nora groaned. "I was just about to get smashing properly."

"Nora, these White Fang are almost all children." There was a collective "What?!" from most of the group, none more so than Blake. Gambol Shroud was quickly sheathed and the ex-Second in Command of their faction stepped forward. Ruby was going to call out, but Yang held her sister back, her Mark glowing slightly and a grin on her face. She knew what Blake was doing, even if no one else knew.

"Why are you fighting?" the Cat Faunus started, removing her ribbon to show her heritage. Her hearing now much better because she didn't have the ribbon muffling sounds in her second ears, she heard - nay, felt - Nora's high pitched squeal at the sight of Blake's 'Super Adorable Kitty-Cat Ears'. Blake then also heard Velvet's "Ow...", considering she was right next to Nora when the squeal started, and the rabbit ears worked a little better than her Cat ones. "You are nothing but children."

"W-we are t-the ones who fight for what we believe is r-right." Blake walked closer to the girl at the front, the one who spoke up to them, with her hands held up so that they could see there was nothing she was hiding or planning on doing.

"But you are children, are you not?" She felt the fear in this one's heart; a chameleon Faunus, if the changing skin colour didn't make it obvious enough already. "What had Adam done to you?"

" _Brother Adam_ has given us a purpose!" the girl snapped back, her fear subsided slightly. "W-we know what we stand for and we will fight for it."

"And what is that?" She was intent on driving her point home.

"If we are seen as monsters, we shall treat the humans like monsters. We will make them fear us as we had learned to fear them!" It sounded monotonous, like a script. Blake felt guilt, and Yang felt her guilt too, at what the organisation had become.

"I am not your enemy. We are not. Fighting and violence will only cause more fighting and more violence that will eventually cause death and destruction. I don't want that for us. I want equality too, but these methods are wrong." Her time in the group made her gain a certain ineptitude to speeches like this. "Adam Taurus has taken things too far. He's roping in children like you to fight a cause that is not yours to fight. Yes, you are the future of Faunus-kind, I know that much. But you have been brainwashed. _I_ had been brainwashed, and I was much younger than you when this all kicked off. I saw how The White Fang changed, it was abrupt in some places, but it lasted. I broke away, and whilst my actions still haunt me to this day, I feel like what I am doing is right. I want you to feel the same." Blake kneeled in front of the chameleon and removed her mask, showing a teary eyed 11 year old girl behind. "I want you to feel like you can live your lives without fear of constant prejudice. It will always happen, there will always be hate, but we can fight it if we fight ourselves first. When we change, the world may change around us too." She gave the girl a maternal hug, who instantly flung her arms around the older Faunus and started sobbing into the woman's shoulder. Masks were removed and crying could be heard throughout the group. The remaining 10 students came forward, weapons away, and started comforting the children.

After a few minutes, Goodwitch arrived with a look that she was ready to throw down, but stopped short when she saw 11 of her students comforting, talking with and laughing with these... children? Children in White Fang outfits. Green eyes flew open as the realisation hit her.

"Professor Goodwitch," Velvet harked her over, the Huntress slowly complying as she stared around at the groups being spoken to by the students. Some of Velvet's group started whimpering and hiding behind the shy Faunus herself. "Shh, shh, it's alright. Professor Goodwitch is a Huntress, but she's such a caring person. She won't hurt you." The brief glance the crop wielder was given by the mage told her that wasn't a request, but an order. She was going to do that anyway, but the conviction in the student's eyes made her realise how serious this was to her. "Professor, have you seen Coco around anywhere?"

"I'm afraid not, Ms. Scarlatina. I can go and look around for you, see what I can find." Her lips curled upwards to show her genuine concern, a gesture the Faunus greatly appreciated.

"Thank you. Oh, can you look for Neo as well? She and Coco were heading towards the Tower together." With a brief nod, Glynda turned and went off searching for the students. The children of The White Fang were finding that each of the students present had their own ways to keep them entertained whilst they all tried to calm down and rethink their choices. Naturally, Yatsuhashi was chosen as a climbing post by certain Faunus', especially one little 8 year old Cat Faunus who really loved climbing onto his shoulders then rubbing her cheek against his own. He couldn't help but laugh when he saw Velvet taking photos of them together. Some more hyperactive ones found out that Ruby's semblance meant she could fly around at breakneck speeds, so they wanted to try that out and see if they could catch her. When she almost got overwhelmed by numbers, the hooded girl sought refuge behind her partner. Both girls screamed as they were tackled to the floor by 5 over-energised Faunus children. When the mass of white, black and grey removed itself from the pair, JNPR and Fox all started laughing at the sight before them - Weiss Schnee wrapping her arms around Ruby Rose like her life depended on it, her head buried in the girl's shoulder. Ruby's silver eyes opened and saw the sight herself, her cheeks tinting pink as she realised. That pink was very promptly replaced with full on crimson when she realised the 11 pairs of Faunus children eyes and 5 pairs of friends' eyes were staring at them.

"Ruby?" the platinum haired Heiress muttered through fabric on her partner's shoulder. "Tell me straight..."

' _Kinda hard to do that Weiss-y._ '

"...are we dead?"

"I mean, I don't know about you, but _I_ might be in heaven right now." She spoke with a large, teasing grin, knowing Weiss' thoughts on the matter. The woman in question removed her head from where it had fallen, her brilliant blue pools staring into silver.

"What are you talking about?" Ruby said nothing, letting her grin widen as she gestured down with her eyes. Following her gaze, she saw her own arms wrapped around Ruby, and then she remembered resting her head in Ruby's shoulder... How it was possible to do so the scythe wielder had no idea, but Weiss' skin simultaneously paled and flushed at the sight.

"D'you think we can do this more often? I like it." Weiss' eyes shot very speedily to their flank to look at their friends and the group of children at their side, then back to the girl she was laying with on the floor.

"We'll need to redo the list then," Weiss reminded her in a hushed voice, clearly the list was for their eyes only.

"Aw, do we have to?"

"Yes, you dolt."

"I'm your dolt."

"Ugh, I wish sometimes I _wasn't_ Heiress to the SDC, otherwise I would have been all up for this a year ago. I just don't want to disappoint Father any more than I probably already am until after I've graduated and am no longer tied by his rule."

"Just hurry up and graduate already so I can kiss you. I can't wait any longer." Weiss leaned in and whispered something in the brunette's ear that made her heart flutter in joy.

"If we're rewriting the list, we may move a few other things around as well."

"When did _you two_ get together-together?" Nora almost screamed at the top of her lungs, causing a large number of people - Blake and Velvet included - to clutch their heads in pain at the intense noise. "Sorry..."

"We're not," the pair affirmed to her at the same time.

"At least, not together-together," the Heiress finished. Ruby followed up with an explanation of their relationship.

"See, Weiss Dad's a bit strict when it comes to this sort of thing. So, when we discussed it we weren't sure what we were going to do. Blake and Yang suggested we at least tell Winter, Weiss' sister, and ask her opinion; turns out, she'd been in a very similar situation. Her advice was to set out very strict rules that we could work our way through as time progressed. So, we did that. We've been 'together' since Summer Break between our First and Second Year, it gave us the most time we could to figure things out. One thing that was written in right at the start was when we'd tell you and when we'd tell tell him."

"He was first, understandably. My Father would shut the relationship down before it even got running if he could, but the slower we took things beforehand the better chance we'd have at earning his approval, however half-assed it may be." There were a few stifled giggles from the younger listeners.

"Weiss, kids. No swears." With an "Eep!", she threw her hands over her mouth and remained silent.

"Wow, so you've been going, like, _REEEAAALLLLLLYYY_ slow then."

"Neither of us want to, but yeah."

"I know the feeling." Nora shot a less than subtle wink at Ren, who rolled his eyes at the gesture. As that whole conversation was going on, Blake and Yang were sat down on the floor with a bunch of the kids surrounding them, all gazed fixed on the couple.

"What happened then?" a little Badger Faunus asked, everyone else nodding enthusiastically at her question.

"It was quite a rough ride. Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yes" came the choral reply from those listening.

"Are you _sure?_ "

"Yes!"

"Are. You..."

"Yang, stop teasing them. Tell them the story."

"You're no fun. So, we were still 17 at the time, it was Spring and we were tasked to track down this giant nest of Grimm. We were expecting a large nest of them, we weren't expecting one this big though." Some of the children gasped at the prospect. Yang had slipped into storytelling mode, her voice rising and falling whenever it needed, pausing at the right moments for effect. All those years effectively being Ruby's unofficial mother meant this sort of thing was a regular occurrence for her when she was small, and it carried over. "There were nearly 100 Grimm there that day, and it was just myself and Blake there to fight them all."

"Did you die?" a voice came from the back.

"Yes, we did," Blake answered completely deadpanned. "But, something amazing happened."

"What? What happened? Tell us, please!"

"I will, just be patient," she calmly said. "When I said that we had died, we weren't completely 'bleh'." On that, Blake relaxed her neck completely, letting her head fall backwards, she dropped her arms by her side, her tongue came out and her amber eyes rolled back into her head. She waited for the giggles to die down again before she sprung back up and continued her story as if nothing had happened. "No, our bodies were in ruins and our spirits were all but shattered, we may as well have been dead. But we saw something."

"Something that made everything better."

"Something that made us want to fight until the next fight."

The answered together, linking their hands as they did. "Her." There was a chorus of gasps as the children registered what the two women said.

"So, you are in love with a human?"

"Yup."

"And she is a Huntress?"

"One of the best in our year."

"And you still love her, even though she is those things?"

"Listen kid," Yang added before Blake could speak again, her voice still calm and gentle but with an air of annoyance in it, "the world ain't black and white. Love's the same. We love each other for who we are, not what we represent. When I found out what Blake was and what she had done in the past, I was angry, sure - for all of an hour. Two at best. I'd do anything for her, as I know she'd do for me. We're so opposite and that's what makes us special."

"I'm the moon, whilst she is the sun. She's selfless, I've been selfish-"

"Blakey, that's not true."

"We've gone over this, it _is_ true. Well, it _was_. Ever since we got these, most of our traits have started spilling into one another." Blake lowered herself and bared her shoulder to the children, who all stared at the tattoo like pattern of Blake's Mate Mark. Yang followed suit, proving that they were sharing that mark.

"That is so cool!" one Faunus kid shouted.

"Can you make it do the glowy thing?" another asked, a small dark haired Cat Faunus.

"I wanna play with the one with the big hammer," a third chimed.

"Nuh uh, _I_ wanted to go to her first," a fourth countered. A large group of children either ran off to go 'play with' others out of diversity in these activities they were doing or boredom of their current one. All that were left after that were the two students and the smaller Cat Faunus who asked them about the Mark's glow. She shuffled forwards, being the only one there, and looked very closely at Yang's Mark as Blake flared an emotion to cause it to glow.

 _Happy._

"That's so awesome! My Mommy and Daddy used to show me their Marks when I was younger." Blake's ears perked up at the one bit of happy news she'd received in the last hour or so.

"They had Mate's Marks too? That's pretty amazing. Most Faunus spend their entire lives without a Mate. They must be so happy."

"Until Mommy died, they were very happy."

 _Shock._

Neither one of them were expecting the kid to drop that bombshell at all.

"I miss her. Daddy said it felt like he could still feel Mommy on his shoulder." Instinctively, Blake leaned forward and grabbed the child. Being a Cat Faunus herself, along with her Mother before her, she recalled how Kali used to rub her cheek along her face and purr, and it made everything seem all better. So that's what Blake did.

"You'll be alright." She rubbed and purred, halting the imminent tears before they even surfaced. "We're not your Mommy, but we'll look after you until you get to your Daddy." Yang joined her, hugging onto the little girl and comforting her in her own way. Blake continued for no more than 30 seconds before she felt Yang's emotions burst through her once more.

 _Pride. Maternal._

A brief amount of confusion coursed through the older Cat Faunus, but it was gone within a couple of heartbeats. Instead, Blake looked up at Yang, who was beaming like a madwoman, because she had felt Blake's emotions a few seconds before hers were broadcast to her partner.

 _Nostalgia. Calm. Maternal._

They both felt the same way - a motherly instinct when it came to making sure of this girl's safety and to make her feel like there were women out there for her - and as such, they were going to have a long conversation about it once this had all blown over.

"Ms. Scarlatina!" Velvet paused halfway through one of her tales to look at the voice of Glynda Goodwitch off in the distance, and upon seeing who she was standing next to bounded up and ran towards the weak body of her girlfriend. One of her arms was wrapped around the blonde Huntress' shoulder and the other holding onto her head right by a nasty cut she'd received when the kick came; it's what occasionally happens when you're attack when you aren't focussed to flare your Aura up.

"Coco! What happened? Are you alright? Where's-"

"Taken..." she muttered. Worried she'd misheard it, slight more worried she'd heard it correctly, Velvet asked again what she said. "Neo was taken... There when the bomb went off, kick to the head, gone afterwards, ow..."

"Hey, take it easy." She flared her Aura, sending encouraging thoughts and feelings through the Mark.

"You can't hide your fear from me that way Velvs," Coco reminded her, having clearly felt the fear through the link even though she couldn't see her - wherein the fear was pretty clear for all to see anyway.

"I agree with Ms. Adel here, leave the Mark alone and focus on pooling your Aura rather than your feelings. If you want, you can make your way to the Infirmary whilst I look after the children here - I'm sure they'll be delighted to have patients not an hour into the new academic year." Glynda wasn't fazed by the Marks on the couple, nor on Blake and Yang; her teammates back when she was a student got together and had Mates Marks in their final few terms, so she knew a fair amount about them. With a nod and a grin, Velvet ushered her girlfriend to the Infirmary as Goodwitch made her way to the rest of the students and children, a previously unseen piece of paper folded in her off hand. "Mr. Alistair?" Fox looked up and saw Goodwitch there, so has to break away from the kids he was with to speak to her. "Orchid still is your girlfriend, correct?"

"She is, yes. Why?"

"Well, whilst it would be ever so slightly unprofessional for me to do so, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't worried for her personal safety. Orchid is a good friend of mine and the closest I have been to a student since I was one myself - I know, unprofessional, but I digress. We both know that against a large number of people she would be fine, especially if they were mostly, slash all, children with little fighting experience like these little ones here. But there were no such other large groups anywhere that weren't being dealt with by other students. At least, none anywhere near where I found Coco and where Orchid would have most likely been taken. What worried me the most was the note that was written and left with Ms. Adel when I found her." Fox took the paper from Glynda, read through it and let his anger boil up to the surface.

 _Taking her home, she's grounded. RT_

"Torchwick..." the young man growled, crumbling the paper into a ball in his fist.

* * *

I always felt that Adam would sink to a low like this in canon. While it wasn't this specific thing, the fact he set out with such a narrow minded goal of making Blake's family pay for what _she_ did to him is proof enough of the concept.

The real meat of this part of the story should kick in within the next couple of chapters, so look out for them in a week's time.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	48. Unfamiliarity

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

' _What... what's going on?_ '

The first thoughts that circled round Neo's head remained there long after they were first thought. Her eyes were heavy, so much so that the usually simple act of opening them was a real task. But when she eventually managed to get them open, she sorely wished she'd kept them shut. All she saw was purple. The supports that held the room up were a deep violet in colour, as was the table she seemed to be strapped to. The sky was constantly dark out, but the clouds shone with a reddish-purple glow that gave the impression of blood. There had to be a way out of here; Roman was smart, but not smart enough to know that chains wouldn't work on her.

"I wouldn't try and escape my dear" a voice came from behind her. The refined accent gave Neo the impression of what the man was like before he even came into view, and on seeing him was impressed with how close he was to how she imagined him. Doctor Arthur Watts stood there, his green eyes trained on the woman in front of him. One hand typed away on his Scroll - which seemed to be custom made to match his colour scheme of black, red and yellow - whilst the other scratched his moustache. "I also wouldn't struggle. Whilst it will make my job much more difficult, even though it already will be, I wouldn't want any unnecessary attention from our friends outside." His cryptic words made the mute turn her head to see what he meant, and that's when her irises turned a ghostly white. Grimm. Tonnes of Grimm, spawning from pools of some tar-like substance on the ground; fresh, new and eager to kill, but sluggishly slow. She did her utter best to calm her emotions and avert the attention of the slow-moving mass of darkness that waited on the other side of the wall.

' _Think Neo, what would you normally do? Well, first off - where are you? Then, how would you contact your team to tell them? I don't remember anything like-_ ' Her train of thought was cut by a man jumping onto the table she was one, one leg landing either side of her frame, crazy golden eyes leaning in and staring right at her.

"Hohoho, what do we have _here?_ Is this your new plaything?"

"Yes, Tyrian, it is." The crazier one, Tyrian, looked at his companion, then turned his attention back to her, menacing grin plastered over his face.

"And how are you going to kill this one? Can I help? I know some _really_ good ways of-"

"Killing will not be necessary, Tyrian." The man's expression changed in an instant, jumping off and landing at the foot of the table. He bowed, clearly this person was someone he respected. Or feared. Or both.

"My Queen, forgive me. I did not know what-" she clearly stopped him, though Neo didn't see that.

"She will not be killed, unless she disobeys me and I end up doing it myself." The figure moved into the view of the mute, and she felt her skin run cold. Yup, definitely someone to be feared. Neo may need to retract her thoughts of Goodwitch being The Scariest Thing on Remnant. "Do you know who I am, child?" Neo nodded, for that was all she could do. "Was it Cinder who told you?" Another nod. "I'm glad she still knew her place then. Such a shame really. She had so much potential..." That didn't sound good, and Neo knew that this was the sort of person where every little action and change in the voice had its reason. "Though her replacement was far better at capturing you than what she had attempted."

"Well, I do try my best." Now that voice she knew. "How are you feeling, Neo?" Roman asked, not even caring for the answer but also knowing that, because her arms were tied and her voice was non-existent, he wasn't going to get an answer anyway.

"Have you any inclination as to why you may have sparked our interest in you... Neo, was it?" A shake for no. "Good." Salem turned to Arthur. "Give her a small dose, see how she fairs. We'll increase it as time continues." The moustached man grinned and nodded, moving forward and placing two bracelets on her wrists, something she was incapable of stopping from happening. "Normally Neo, I'd want to do things my way - using Grimm to infect your mind and alter your judgement. But you already have a vicious streak like that in you, so Roman tells me. So, we're going for a much more classic approach." Once the bracelets were secured, Watts grinned again and pressed a button atop a control he'd taken out of his pocket. There was a brief hum, that quickly made way for a large surge of electricity centred on the two wrist mounted devices she was now wearing, pain flowing through her body along with the current. A few seconds later, the shocking stopped and she hunched over, panting.

"That was a small dose, just something to get you familiar with the idea of what's going to happen to you when you step out of line."

"Take your time Neo," Roman mocked, "fight against everything she throws at you, 'cause the longer you resist, the more Arthur here gets to shock you, and the more fun I have watching your sorry ass squirm in pain." All she could do to convey her disdain was raise a middle finger on her hand closest to the bowler hat wearing criminal. "Tsk, tsk, Neo. It seems you'll never learn." The hum sounded again, finishing at a higher pitch than before and another shock came, this time with greater intensity and for longer. The bracelets even started to visibly spark with the intensity. Her mouth flew open in pain, and tears fell from her eyes as she was forced to endure. Oum, she wished she could scream right now. It's all she wanted. That, or the arms of her boyfriend wrapped around her telling her that everything will be okay.

* * *

Team CFVY had regrouped in the Infirmary after the battle. Coco was nursing her head injury, though Velvet was allowed to be next to her and help by channelling Aura through to her to aid the mend. Fox and Yatsuhashi joined them after half an hour, once Glynda and eventually Ozpin rounded up the children outside and sent them off somewhere safe. Teams JNPR and RWBY went with them to the door, then parted outside. The RW had some alterations to their 'Relationship Rules' books that needed seeing to, and the BY had a long talk ahead of them, so they mentioned they were going to head into Vale for coffee/tea, lunch and their talk. JNPR had been asked to speak to the new First Years, so they were off there to do so. And CFVY sat in the Infirmary, the girls huddled together in bed, the boys sat in chairs either side of the bed.

"How could he do that?" Fox shouted, still very raw and annoyed from the revelation earlier. "Neo was the most skilled one in that group, how could Roman Torchwick kidnap her?" The other three were in two minds about speaking, not wanting to make things worse for their friend and teammate. After a long silence, they finally spoke.

"Fox... Neo wasn't taken easily."

"You say that like it makes it better."

"Hey!" Coco may have been hit in the head, but that didn't mean she was out for the count. "If I could have helped her, I would! But a compact Dust Bomb went off at our feet, then I was kicked in the head when my Aura was down. How'd you help your girlfriend when that had happened to you?" The Faunus at her side tried to de-escalate the situation.

"Coco, that's-"

"No, he needs to hear this. And I don't care if he's heard it before, he's going to listen to me say it. The world does not revolve around you Fox. Neo is gone, she was taken right from my grasp. I didn't want that, but it happened. And we are going to have to move on from that."

"Oh, what? I give up on my girlfriend now, because she's not here?"

"Let me fucking finish, damn it! We move on; we accept that Neo is gone for now, and so we go and get her back."

"Whilst I don't appreciate the language," Ozpin mentioned, once again appearing out of nowhere at the right time to insert himself into the conversation, "I would want to agree with you. Unless you have absolutely no choice, which is not the case here, you should never leave a teammate. So, I'd advise you to go find her. However, Professor Goodwitch informs me that you were on the way to the Tower to confirm your choice for your first mission this year, is that correct?"

"It was, yes sir."

"Now, here is the predicament. Telling me that, I've accepted you to that mission. But as you are that simply won't be the case. So I can postpone the start of the mission for a week, at best. Afterwards you must either hand the mission over to another team or take it on regardless of your numbers. I know how much completing a certain part of this mission means to Ms. Russet, so equally I know how much you want her back before you head out. But, for your own safety and my sanity, I hereby place you under strict orders to remain within the school premises for at least 3 days, starting today. That way, recovery should be all but complete for yourself, Ms. Adel, and you can plan your course of action from there. Now, if you'll excuse me." And like that, he was gone again.

"I hate it when he does that..." Yatsuhashi muttered.

"Hey, you said it."

"You were thinking it."

"True."

"So, what do you guys want to do?"

"Well," Fox rose from his seat, stretched a little bit and picked up his weapons from beside the seat, "I'm going to go and train. I'll train until I've exhausted myself completely, crash back on my bed, then train again tomorrow and the day after, maybe even the day after that."

"And you know you'll burn through your Aura reserve like kindling." The Rabbit girl was especially skilled at Aura Studies, but that was basic stuff that even half-experienced First Years would know. "You can't train and train and then expect to go back to normal after that without at least a day off or two a week."

"I know, I know, I planned that out. Today and every other day, train myself to exhaustion, calm down, do it all again until I can't anymore, then crash. Tomorrow and every second day after that, small and basic training sessions in the morning and late afternoon with the rest of the day searching for possible locations of Neo."

"Commendable, but ultimately fruitless. We have, at most, six days to do anything before the mission at Four Seasons is handed off, you won't gain any benefit from training yourself to exhaustion in that time frame. If anything, you'll get yourself killed. For good this time."

"Just try and stop me Yatsu." With that, Fox left the room. Frustrated sighs came from all three remaining teammates simultaneously.

"We can't stop him," Velvet admitted. "He'd train harder if we tried." No one could come up with an excuse or counter argument to the statement. With reluctant defeat, they silently went back to what they were doing before - Coco recovering, Velvet pooling her Aura to help with that, Yatsuhashi meditating in the chair. "I just hope Neo's alright..."

* * *

A far shorter chapter than what I've been putting out normally. But, in my defence, I've been occupied with celebrations for my 21st birthday and haven't had the time to write recently. But hey, at least it's something, and it works as a sort of buffering chapter between what happened previously and what is to come.

I promise I'll make it up to you with some unique action in the next chapter.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	49. 30 Seconds 'til Showtime

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

From the Infirmary, he made his way back to the dorm to grab some gym clothes so he could work out a little better. Arguably, not the best choice. The very first thing he noticed was Neo's stuff in their room. Hard not to really, considering their bed was closest to the middle of the room.

When Neo officially started, the pair of them shared his single bed for the rest of the academic year. When they started Year Three, Neo and Velvet both made requests to have their singles replaced with doubles. As such, when you walked in to the CFVYN dorm room you saw the Fox and Neo bed off centre to the left of the door, Coco and Velvet's more on the right of the room and Yatsuhashi's in the corner.

He saw her pillow - a pink, fluffy number with an ivory trim, hand-made herself obviously - resting where it always did on her side of the bed. He saw her Plushie, her cute little Griffon Plushie that he had won her when they went to the Vale Carnival their first summer together. He remembered it so clearly, it was a shooting range. "Think you got what it takes? 5 for a small gift, 8 for a medium, all 10 for a big prize!" The words rang through his ears as if someone had been there and recorded the entire interaction. ' _Go on hun!_ ' Neo would silently say, holding on to his arm and shaking it enthusiastically. "Alright..." he reluctantly replied. He then sunk 8 targets and she silently cheered. "Pick one, my treat." That's how Ramsey the Griffon Plushie came to be. He found the sweet irony in that Plushie, the mere fact that he won that for her at a _shooting range_ of all places brought back happy memories of them.

But that's not what he came back to the dorm to do. He came to get his gym stuff and go to the Gym.

His drawer had the same twisted sense of humour as the room did, because the first thing he saw in the drawer was their hoodie. Well, it was technically his hoodie, she bought it for him when they got that basic casual wear when he first could see. But she wore it just as much as, if not more than, him that it became their hoodie. A smile crept to his lips when he remembered one time Neo almost managed to convince Velvet that she was going into Vale with their hoodie on, a tank top and a pair of shorts underneath, only for her to slip up and show off her bare behind to the Faunus. Neo was cursing gravity for the rest of the day.

But he wasn't here for that either. He pushed the hoodie to the side of the drawer and grabbed his gym clothes, got changed and headed there.

On the way there, he walked past a place on campus and spotted a couple walking along, holding hands and talking to the other with giant smiles on their faces. Neo was always like that. Every conversation they seemed to have, her face glowed with a radiant smile that was honestly infectious. One of those smiles that, even if you thought about it - like Fox was now - it brought a smile to your own face. With a violent shake of the head and a dissatisfied grunt, he purged that thought from his mind and set his sights on what he had come for.

The Gym was empty. Perfect. Fox could honestly do without the unnecessary distraction of other students. Setting down his bag in the provided locker, he made a beeline straight for the treadmill. If he was going to train himself to exhaustion, then this ought to get things going. No mucking around, he went straight to full-on slow run speed - 15km/h when he took it a little slower, 18.5km/h when he went full on - and ran for 10 minutes. By the end, he was feeling the burn, but it wasn't enough to get him breathing any heavier. As a Huntsman, you needed extraordinary endurance to be able to combat hordes of Grimm with no Aura help, so those who wanted to become one often trained from young ages to improve stamina. Other more pleasurable methods also helped, but that was beside the point. He didn't want to be a little bit warmed up, he wanted to almost be dragged out of here back to his dorm. So he jumped on again, going faster for longer. Still nothing major. He swore at the equipment and moved on.

Weights, that ought to do the trick. Grabbing a set of 10kg Bells, he went and did 25 reps, rested for 10 seconds, 25 reps, rest for 10, on and on until he had done 15 lots of 25. His arms felt nothing; no major lactic acid build up, no strain, just warm. It took all his might not to throw the dumbbells in annoyance. The punching bag may help him de-stress a little before he tried something else. He went for it, practically jumping from the weight rack to the bag and started laying fast and heavy punches into the leather exterior of the Ultra-Heavy bag. Ever since Yang first came to Beacon, simple Heavy bags broke in a few swings, especially if she came here to let off steam. They tried their Extra-Heavy bags, but they didn't last long either. So, they created Ultra-Heavy bags. It was composed of a prototype new material used in Atlas Military Vehicles to be lightweight, yet incredibly resistant to damage. Sadly, this prototype was made as durable as what they had intended, but also was the complete opposite of lightweight - it was denser that basically every other known material on Remnant. Whilst originally considered a failure, upon learning of a need for a very strong, dense and durable metal via a call with Ozpin, General Ironwood sent 10 brand new punching bags with their inner lining composed of their new alloy - Knallhartium. The chains suspending the bag rocked in the ceiling, dust coming down where the supports rocked uneasily under the constant strain of such ferocious attacks. He kept going until he really worked up a sweat and was panting heavily. Then he pushed on and did more. By the time someone else had turned up, the floor around him was visibly wet from the sweat pouring off of him.

He wasn't done, far from it. He may have been sweating buckets and panting heavily, but he hadn't collapsed yet. He needed a challenge. And he spotted it. He walked over to the Holo-Arena and keyed in his pass code for entry. The Holo-Arena used similar methods of creating and projecting hard light replicas of Creatures of Grimm as Velvet does with her semblance, only this one was much less refined than hers due to it being autonomous, whereas hers was controlled by her brain. His chosen Creatures took a while to fully materialise, but that was the beauty of the machine. Well, beauty to some. Whilst they were still loading in, their consciousness is enabled and so they can still attack you and it still hurts if they do, but you can't attack back. It was an unintentional glitch in the system, but one that had been implemented as part of the programming in all future models with adjustable settings. In this, the original model with no adjustable settings, it meant that for about 30 seconds after they gained artificial sentience, you could do nothing but dodge and evade. Those 30 seconds dragged for Fox as the 4 Beowolf Alphas he'd programmed to spawn took forever.

1 second after - the Alphas started circling, their ghostly white forms very pale and still very much see-through, but you could tell they were there.

2 seconds after - Fox pulled the wrap around his hand tighter, even though he was hitting hard light Grimm, it was going to give a bit of sensory feedback.

3 seconds - sound system started to boot up in the Holo-Arena.

4 seconds in and already the Beowolves looked ready to attack.

5, 6 and 7 seconds were about the same, although more noise was heard from the hard light monsters.

Their growls were completely audible at 8 seconds.

On the 9th second, the Alpha on Fox's left flank roared a battle cry.

One third of the way there, and they became very obviously more visible.

11 seconds in and the roar stopped and the pounce was readied.

When the timer hit 12 seconds gone, the first Beowolf attacked.

A claw swiped for Fox on second 13.

The scarred boy was airborne after 14 seconds.

Halfway there - a second Alpha leapt towards Fox, who was unable to really get out of the way.

16 seconds - boy and hard light collided in mid-air.

17 seconds in - boy and Holo-Arena wall meet.

After 19 seconds, boy and Holo-Arena floor are reintroduced to one another.

Fox craned his neck upwards with 10 seconds left of dodging to go, spotting 2 hard light Grimm advancing.

He was rolling away from a crushing blow that hit the ground hard with 22 seconds gone.

Tired copper brown eyes made contact with lifeless glowing ones at 23 seconds.

By 24 seconds, Fox had sussed out which one was the Alpha of the Alphas.

5 seconds left, and he pulled himself up off the floor, the 'main' Alpha on his right.

26 seconds in - a sharp out breath came, as did the pump of wrists to unfold the weapon from its bracelet state.

Another roar from his left with 27 seconds gone.

Gauntlets completely unfolded at 28 seconds, Fox pushed all his weight onto his legs.

At 29 seconds, that weight was expelled through his feet, forcing him in the air hurtling towards the 'main' Alpha.

After a long 30 seconds, every Beowolf, regardless of their current fighting situation, glowed a new, healthy blue.

On the 31st second, Fox's left Gauntlet made contact with the face of the main Alpha of the group. Now things were starting to turn in Fox's favour again. Time moved forward, each second bleeding into one rather than every single one punctuated like a sentence, standing on their own merit. The punch knocked the Alpha back, but not by much as the bone like skull plating bore the brunt of the impact, yet there was still enough force there to give it something to think about - if it could think. Fox used the momentum he had to grab hold of the recently punched Alpha and used its body as a springboard to bounce to the next Grimm. The next Alpha attempted to bite at its incoming prey, but bullets from his Gauntlets stopped its advances. Two fists crashed into the throat of the creature, causing it to fall back in pain. The copper haired boy steadied himself on the neck, then backflipped upwards from it, bringing foot and face together to leave the latter worse off of the two. The creature stumbled back even more, and Fox flicked the switch to bring his blades to the front of his weapons. As he jumped back at the dark creature, he dodged two swings from two of the other Alphas, then plunged the blades back into the neck of it. In one final movement, he threw his arms out sideways, decapitating the beast.

"One down," he puffed, "three to go..."

As the hard light Alpha disappeared from existence behind him, he eyed up his remaining enemies. The 'main' Beowolf Alpha with the cracked skull plate, and two completely untouched Alphas. He let his Aura flow down to his feet as he pushed off the ground, throwing his body forward into the fray. First instincts were to attack the damaged one, and as it was the unofficial leader of the remaining three it'd also be a tactical advantage. Sadly, they all had other ideas. One took a hard swipe at him, narrowly dodged when he rolled underneath the bony claw, whilst the other made a grab for him, which almost caught him had he not jumped away. There was however the matter of the third creature, who dove into the back of the Fourth Year student and knocked the wind out of him and grounded him face down out of their way. The three of them menacingly stalked up behind him, their hard light legs making no sound when they impacted the floor but their artificial breathing and snarling still heard through the speaker systems.

The 'main' Alpha jumped at him, aiming both its claws at his chest. With a cry, he retracted his blades back so that they were behind his fists again, then brought them up to protect himself, the added length of the blades would have made things much more difficult to defend against the claws, what with there being more leverage room. The struggle lasted longer than he would have liked, the Alpha snarling down at him as it thought it had the upper hand after a while. One button press and one trigger pull on each hand saw the blades extending again and his arms firing outwards with enough force to slice away the hands of the beast, the roar of pain hurting his ears. Seeing an opportunity to level the playing field even more, the young man rocked backwards onto his shoulders, then sprung from the floor upwards, his feet colliding with its jaw just like its brethren before. Having stumbled into the back wall, Fox knew it wouldn't be getting in the way any time soon, so he only had two more of these to deal with.

He stayed still, blades dropped like extensions of his own arm hanging by his side, his stance lowered to the ground so that if he needed to move he could do so with enough speed to get away rather than having to drop and _then_ jump away. His breaths were incredibly heavy and, on further inspection, his Aura was running in the low yellow region, bordering on orange. Just what he wanted. The Alpha on his right gave a roar and charged at him. Because his legs were already coiled like a spring, it didn't take much effort to effortlessly fly over the monster's head, landing a couple of slices on the bony back of the beast. When he landed, the shot himself towards the other untouched, dodging left and right to avoid its attacks. His mind was laser focussed on dispatching this beast then moving on to the next, so much so that he didn't realise the other Beowolf construct was biting at his core until the hard light teeth had clamped around his body. His cry of pain was muffled by the walls of the Holo-Arena, but what sound did escape them echoed through the Gym, much like his cries in the Museum back in his Second Year.

' _Maybe Yatsu was right... I really_ _ **am**_ _going to kill myself. I'm sorry Neo. I'm sorry I let you do-_ ' the teeth vanished, as did the other Alphas and Fox fell to the floor, impacting the metal hard. The doors shot open and two people ran up to him.

"Are you insane?!"

"Don't answer, we know already!" His eyes strained to see, which was odd because he's pretty sure they're completely open. He didn't care anymore though, he wanted to fall asleep. So he did.

* * *

FeugoFox42's PSA of the Day:  
Don't go trying to kill yourself to prove anything.  
And that concludes FeugoFox42's PSA of the Day.

You don't need to be an expert to know that Fox isn't exactly taking the news of his girlfriend's capture too well. We'll have to just wait it out and see what he plans on doing from now on.

Oh, and please forgive the later than usual upload time, was having my mind blown by **Infinity War**. Spoiler free verdict: Go watch it yesterday!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	50. Blurry

50 story chapter... holy hell, where has the time gone?

* * *

 **KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Watts." The humming ended an entire octave higher than when it had first rung in her ears, and it felt like the pain had equally jumped up an entire level as well. Electricity literally arced from the devices all over her body when it started. Neo felt hairs being individually singed with each and every shock. She wanted to escape, but every shock was worse, she knew that'd keep going until her eye's boiled in her head, her nerves fried and her brain exploded, so she gave up soon after.

"The best part is," the mustachioed Doctor explained to his superior, "is that each bracelet contains a small vial of an Aura Suppressant, and an Aura Replenisher not too dissimilar to those rudimentary 'Aura Shots' they get given at the Hospitals. She can struggle all she wants, waste all the energy she wants, but one shock will calm and also revitalise the woman, meaning she can be controlled easier and at much nearer full strength than before the shock." He stared at the woman crumpled on the table she still remained on, her wrists raw from the lacerations she gave herself from trying to escape, though they would fade when her Aura got around to it.

"Most impressive Doctor." Salem basically glided over to the mute on the table, standing next to the ice cream girl and glaring down at her body. "You will break eventually. But no matter, I am willing to wait. Doctor Watts here is a genius beyond his time. He took the Relic and used it in the most fascinating ways. The room you are residing in? Time in here moves 20 times faster than it does in the outside world. 1 second out there is 20 in here, after they experience only 72 minutes of their day, we would have seen the entirety of ours. You get the picture I hope. That means that we have 20 times longer to break you. And that is what will happen. We will break you, or we will kill you." The ashen skinned woman turned to leave, the well-spoken Doctor following suit. "For all of our sakes Neo, don't make us kill you. It would be easier for everyone if you remained alive." And with that, the doors to her room shut once again.

The tear stains were becoming part of her attire now, what with how frequently they'd appear. It had been 2 and a half days since she woke up here, so by that logic it would have been only just approaching the 3 hours mark for her team and friends back at Beacon. Why couldn't she escape? She normally could. Part of her, the old part - not Orchid, nor the new Neo, but the one in between, the one that killed with no remorse - wanted to stay, wanted to see what they had in store for her. She fought against those urges, but they felt like they were surfacing time and time again, pushing stronger and harder every time.

She felt colder.

Not literally (although it wasn't exactly tropical conditions where she was), but she felt like the old Neo, the cold hearted killer for hire. She didn't want that. Even if she didn't know exactly what her large scale game plan was, she knew that bringing the old Neo back was on the board as a stitch in the fabric of her grand scheme. There was one thing that kept her holding on to reality. Fox. As her grip on it slowly loosened and her old life returned to the forefront, one thought crossed her mind.

' _I can't live without us._ '

* * *

"I can't live without us." It didn't take long for Fox to admit that to Nylan and Viola, the two Second Years who saved him from his own gruesome death at the hands of a hard light Beowolf Alpha pack, after he regained consciousness. "But something's wrong..."

"Yeah, your mind's gone," Nylan half joked, "no one in their right frame of mind would try to single handedly take on 4 Beowolf Alphas with no one there to either spot for them or be there as back-up!"

"Yeah, you are lucky Nylan and I came past here, else you probably would have ended up as a nice red stain on the floor." They may have been younger by a couple of years, but Fox still felt like he was being scolded by his parents. Ashamed at his self-destructive choice of coping, the scarred man hung his head in shame. Not too long after he did that, a sharp pain was sent through his brain, a kind he hadn't felt before. With an audible grimace, he fell to one knee and clutched his head, the two girls holding onto him to stop the fall.

' _Fox..._ '

A disembodied voice echoed through his mind, but one he knew the source of. "Neo!" he called, confusing and frightening the Second Year students by his side.

' _Can't forever... losing... fight..._ '

Then, silence again. He opened his eyes and saw... he wasn't sure what he saw. The young man screamed almost involuntarily at what was in front of him, staring at his own hands in terror. Holding them at arm's length, they were no longer crystal clear. There was a blurry haze around them. He glanced up and sure enough his vision had indeed deteriorated, the far wall of the Gym was completely blurred away.

"What's up buddy?"

"I... my sight is..." the words fought their way up his throat, almost like they refused to be said aloud. "I need to speak with Ozpin, would you mind helping me get there?" The girls nodded, draped one of his arms over a shoulder each and started heading to the Tower. Viola grabbed his things as they passed, and slowly the fatigued Fourth Year made his way to Ozpin's Office with the Second Years helping him along the way.

The ride up the Tower was always something he'd disliked, even when he was blind. Something about the way the metal around him always seemed a little off. He could never put a finger on it and even in his current state he felt the same way. Everything was different for him again. He'd been so used to using his semblance to get a basic idea of the layout of the world around him that when his sight was granted to him he wasn't too bad with things, just caught off guard by all the colours and beauty of the world. Now, roughly 16 months down the line from the first time he could see, he'd all but neglected to use his semblance at the frequency he used to and as such never relied on it anymore to see, unless he needed to check for hidden people, a trait that wasn't as uncommon as people think at the moment - mostly due to adaptive camouflage being an "in thing" in the world of combat fashion. A task as simple as merely finding the right button on the elevator meant the dark skinned boy had to lean right in close to the wall and find the button with the right number.

"What the hell is happening to me?" he groaned, rubbing his strained temple. As the doors slid open at the top of the Tower, Fox knew he'd walked in on a conversation he maybe shouldn't have been around to hear.

"- Fang are using _children_ , Oz! We can't afford to keep believing we're still in the lap of luxury where no bad will ever come of anything."

"I understand your concerns General, but this is neither the time nor the place to be voicing them."

"This is the _perfect_ time Oz! There are..." the man stopped, his holographic image caught a glimpse of the student approaching slowly from behind them. "Maybe it _isn't_ a good time. Seems you have company." Glynda and Ozpin turned to see Fox make his way to the pair. "We can discuss this at a later date." With that, his likeness faded away.

"Mr. Alistair, there had better be a darn good explanation for why you came up here and interrupted us during an important call to General Ironwood," Glynda threatened. Most days, Fox would have run and hidden at her expression, a look that made any man or woman who knew what was good for them flee in terror. But now that he once again couldn't see far enough in front of him to notice the glare, he continued forward without hesitation. Sadly for him, also without a great deal of depth perception. He stumbled a bit as he approached, then eased his way forward with his arms extended out in front like a zombie to stop himself falling flat on his face if he were to fall. Both adults noticed, the female walking up to him and leading him towards the chair on the near side of the desk opposite the Headmaster's.

"Mr. Alistair, is something the matter?"

"Is there something wrong with my eyes?" he asked, cutting straight to the point. His hopes were that if _he_ was to the point, then maybe _Ozpin_ would do the same, rather than skirt around the question posed. The blonde stared at him for all but 3 seconds before she deduced what was wrong, whereas Ozpin didn't actually look - or at least, Fox _thought_ he didn't look - but rather took Goodwitch's explanation and did what he thought best.

"Fox, when you were with your girlfriend, Orchid - or would you prefer I called her Neo at the moment?"

"Either's fine, just please explain."

"When you were with Neo, how did you feel physically? Did you notice any differences at all?"

"I guess... I kind of felt different from before. Like, whole - to an extent."

"I see." Signature mug in hand, the Headmaster took a sip and continued. "Fox, you are losing your sight again." The young man gasped, sweat forming on his brow in an instant. "I strongly suggest you resort back to your old methods of seeing for the future. Right now, I believe you are owed what I believe is the truth of the situation."

' _Why does he sound so calm about this?_ '

"Your being together seemed far more than a simple accident. Whilst that is all it may have been, it seemed to me too convenient to ignore. The woman was a known criminal with many unspeakable acts against her name. So I kept a close eye on you over the time you had been together and pulled up... nothing. There was absolutely no indication that there were any hidden motives to her being with you. It truly was an accident, and her feelings for you are fuelled with genuine affection. And so, the bond between you became very closely weaved together. Now that she is gone, that weave is unthreading and your lives are spiralling back down the paths they came from. I of course don't know for sure if Neo _is_ going down that route, but if you are then I can assume you know she is most likely in the same situation."

"But then how-"

"I know, I know; 'How come this didn't happen before?' Well one thing is for certain, you parted each other's company by choice before, correct?" The copper haired boy nodded. "But now, you have been torn apart, essentially, by force."

"I fail to understand sir, sorry."

"That is quite enough evidence for me already to figure out that wherever Neo is, she is being kept separated from the outside world, most likely in a room sealed away. And judging by how far your eyesight has deteriorated in the short amount of time she had been gone, I'd say that our enemy has found one of the Relics."

"Relics? Enemy? Sir, what does this have to do with Neo's safety or my sight? Because if the answer is none then please get back to it!"

"Mr. Alistair please refrain from that; I am trying to help you know." With an annoyed grunt, the scarred boy relaxed back in the chair. "Thank you. Now, the Relics are artefacts from times long past, singularities of the basic functions of the Universe. Whilst Dust is the physical manifestation of the elements, Relics are physical manifestations of functions. There are said to be four, and the one I believe that Neo is near to can slow down or speed up a person or small area indefinitely. I would think that our enemy - a person who you should know is there, but not their name for your own safety - has found a way to harness its power and trap Neo in a room where time had been dilated. Her time passes as our does for her, but to her we travel at a snail's pace. In reality, she would spend proportionally more time in the box than time had passed outside it."

"And the lack of vision?" Sighing heavily, Ozpin concluded.

"Whatever they're doing to her, your mental connection is being severed. If we can't act quickly, it may be too late to save her or your eyesight." Fists clenched as Fox wanted so desperately to slam his hands into something, someone, anyone... anyone apart from Glynda or Ozpin, that'd spell 'DOOMED!' in big bold letters printed on his forehead.

"I can't lose her..." he muttered under his breath, something he didn't realise Glynda heard until a hand rested on his shoulder.

"Fox, we are going to do our best to ensure her safety. Trust us." He nodded his head once in sadness, then rose and stepped away from them. They saw him pause after 6 steps, then he pivoted to face them once again.

"I heard her voice earlier..."

"What did she say?" the ever curious Headmaster asked.

"She said, 'Fox... Can't forever... losing... fight...'. I can guess what she means from what you've just said."

"And have you ever had long-distance between you and her using your personal telepathy before that instant?"

"Not without Scrolls." Aged and boring brown eyes stared at brilliant green as they knew they had a window of opportunity, if only they exploited it somewhat.

"Fox, I would like you to try and communicate with Neo, see what you can get from her information wise." The request was made with reluctance in his tone, but necessity in his words. "Our only hope for her - if she's where I think she may be - is for her to be sent out after us."

"I can... always try."

"Thank you. That'll be all for now. Please try to speak with and get as much information from her as you can; perhaps your proper partner can help you try and communicate with your romantic partner. Professor Goodwitch shall show you to the elevator." The crop wielder did as such, making sure he was in the metal box and that he was on the way down, wishing him the best of luck as the doors slid shut - he was going to need it. On the ride down he shut his eyes and focussed his Aura, much like he used to 2 years ago. Glows started forming in his vision, a sign that he was back to what he remembered sight to be like for so long. As doors opened, he saw two fairly prominent glows from a bench nearby, so he made his way to them. Sure enough, when he got closer, he heard the sounds of the two girls who escorted him hear coming from the pools of amber and burgundy Aura.

"Hey Fox," Viola said, jumping off her girlfriend's lap and stepping towards him, "how'd it go?"

"I need to get back to my dorm. I need Yatsu there, and I need him fast." He finished the sentence with a smirk, knowing full well they knew what he was inferring.

"Which one was 'Yatsu' again?" Nylan asked with an air of frustration that was, admittedly, only fleeting.

"Yatsuhashi is the 7ft tall man with the deep voice and giant sword." She felt stupid for asking. Her girlfriend gave her a quick but reassuring peck on the cheek.

"Go get him, girl!" With a smirk, Nylan skipped backwards a couple of steps, then turned and started running. Fox had never seen her run before (and in all seriousness, still hadn't even now) but the speed at which her Aura disappeared from here was mind boggling. "Back to your dorm, you said?"

"Uh huh, I've got to try and have a talk with my girlfriend." He started heading back towards the dorms before Viola jumped up beside him and placed her hand on his chest.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, sweet child of mine! Where are you going on your own?"

Responding like it was the most obvious question on Remnant, Fox replied with, "Uh, my dorm."

"You can't see more than a few metres ahead of you anymore."

"Well, I take it Neo didn't spill the beans on my semblance then, did she?"

"No... why?" Fox shot the young team leader a toothy grin, then wrapped his arm around her shoulder and started walking to the dorm.

"C'mon kid, I've got some talking to do, and there's a sizeable walk between here and the dorm."

* * *

I know the chapter lengths have been dropping again recently, but keeping up with a consistent(ish) volume of work is difficult, especially with work where our busy season has fully kicked in and I'm getting 40 minutes to write at a time, at best.

I aim to bring those numbers back up again, but bear in mind this is also the set-up phase of the act, and that wasn't very big in the first part of the story either.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	51. Talking it All Out

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Footsteps running at them down the hall, getting ever closer was a sound that would set anyone on edge, especially given the speed at which they were approaching. Yatsuhashi stood between Velvet and the incapacitated Coco, and the door. His Greatsword barely fit inside the room when it was on his back, so he kept it by his chair instead. Grabbing the handle, he readied himself for an attack, eyes darting left and right to spot his attacker. To his surprise, it was the Cheetah Faunus from some of Neo's classes Nylan who came running past. Spotting the giant just as she zoomed past the door, she planted her feet and skidded to a complete stop. Sadly, that didn't happen as quick as she would have like and she continued sliding right until she almost collided with the side of a cleaning cart. A couple instances of her repeating "Sorry" later, the girl finally made her way to the room.

"Can we help you?" Velvet asked, peering around her significantly taller teammate.

"Yeah. Well, not you. Big guy here is needed."

"What exactly do you need me for?" Nylan recoiled slightly at his voice.

"Fuck me, your voice _is_ deep!"

"Think that's bad?" Coco added, poking her head around the other side of the man's body, "imagine him on karaoke night with speakers and a tiny bit of boosted bass."

"No thanks, I like my ears when they are not bleeding and my insides don't need shaking up like a cocktail."

"I'd like to hear you try and sing 'Wayfaring Stranger' just like he does," the bass stated, ignoring the younger girl's comment.

"You just show off, that's all." Brushing off the previous 10 seconds of dialogue, Nylan brought the attention back to her with a forced cough to get their attention.

"Fox needs you back in the dorm stat." The male in the group looked to his teammates, who smiled at him.

"Go on, we'll be fine. Fox'll be happy to see you if he's asked." The Cheetah's sudden intake of air caught everyone else's attention. "I'm sorry, was there something wrong with what I said?"

"Kind of... he... can't see anymore..."

"Excuse you?"

"Fox's eyesight is... fading, again. Long story short, something's happening with Neo, Fox's eyesight is fading because of it and I need you to come with me to help Fox speak to Neo before she completely disappears and stuff."

"Wait, disappear?!" Velvet almost jumped at her brethren, catching her by surprise. She held her hands up and shook her head violently fast, trying really hard of finding a way she should un-speak what she just spoken.

"Sorry, no. Disappear was not the right word, but I don't - no, _we_ don't - have the time to think of the right one. Yatsuhashi, are you coming with me?" Taking long strides to step up to the Faunus, he turned as he moved and reassured his team.

"I will help where I can, you two get some rest." With that, they were gone. In her current state, Coco didn't need to be told twice to go to sleep. Neither did Velvet really, though the latter _did_ need to keep getting reassured that she needed to fall back asleep after waking up in the night.

* * *

"Okay, I get the fact that we'll all be glowing around you," the grey eyed girl mentioned, looking up from her Scroll to meet the once again milky eyes of the boy she accompanied back to his dorm, "but how can you tell who is who? I mean, there is no way on Remnant that I can be the _only person_ with a burgundy coloured Aura." Fox sat on his bed, with Viola waiting around with him. She was hanging around with the Fourth Year student not only as a way of keeping him company until his partner arrived to do... whatever it was they were doing, but also to try and clarify some of the things he said on the way over.

"It's not just the colours Viola, it's their moods as well. Every Aura has a mood, its own way of moving that's unique to every person, similar to how a weapon or a semblance is unique. So yeah, you're not the only person I know or have seen with a burgundy Aura."

"Yeah, and I still can-"

"But you're the only one with a burgundy Aura that... I don't know... breathes. It fills up your inner being, then deflates, and it repeats. And you are also the only person with a burgundy Aura that 'breathes' I'm sure I'll see that constantly hangs around with a Faunus with an amber Aura that also 'breathes' inside them." Silver eyes stared at him in shock. Did he just suggest what she thought he'd just suggested? The blind young man nodded with a smile, as if he'd heard her thoughts on the subject; that or he had read her expressions. "Yup, your Aura's complement each other's. They both breath on their own, but together yours slows to a comfortable pace and hers picks up to better match yours, and the middle of your Aura when you're connected is a beautiful deep fiery orange. Not even Coco and Velvet or Blake and Yang have Auras that already matched when first meeting; they just adjusted to the other over time. You two, well..." He decided to finish the explanation there when he noticed Viola staring at him completely amazed - his sight may be all but gone, but he could still make out the familiar colour schemes of his friends and teammates. And now, he saw a bright crimson light emitting from the girl, her smile plastered on the Aura.

"Wow..." was all the girl managed through sheer amazement at the new information presented to her.

"Yeah. Speaking of features, you wanted to ask me something else."

"Hmm? Oh yeah, it was about the whole 'seeing their faces' thing - _how?!_ "

"Would you believe me if I said 'magic'?" he teased. The sparkle in her grey orbs told Fox that the teasing was not something she was going to take lightly. He couldn't even see the sparkle, but he could feel the sudden wave of energy coursing through her, and that was all he needed to tell him to tell her straight. "It's just how my semblance works. The longer I spend in someone's vicinity, the more accustomed I become with their Aura and the more I can see of them. When I know them enough, I see their shape and major details of them, then after that some minor details, things like scars and Faunus traits. After a while, finer details become clearer. Neo was the only one like this, but I saw every inch of her as a glowing version of herself. That was 45 minutes of pure concentration on sensing their Aura and familiarising myself with it through physical contact." Yatsuhashi opened the dorm door, Nylan stepping in after him. "But that's how, in a nutshell" he finished.

"Sorry we didn't get here sooner, the rest of them got caught in a mini debate about singing voices."

"Did you drop the 'Wayfaring Stranger' one again?" Fox asked, completely unsurprised. The giant smiled casually.

"Of course I did."

"What the shit, your voice is low!" Viola commented in disbelief.

"I know, right? I said that too!"

"Moving on from that topic." Yatsuhashi moved over to his own bed, sitting cross legged and facing Fox, who had shifted so his feet were now touching the floor. "You want to try and get in contact with Neo?"

"Yeah..." His head drooped at the mention of her name. "It's just... there's no way we can know where she is, so rescue missions are out of the window. Our only hope of her being saved is for her to come to us, but that also introduces risks. But frankly, I just want to see her again." There were already tears manifesting in the corner of the blind young man's eyes, but now they flowed freely from them. "I had gotten so used to actually having proper sight to the point that this feels like torture now. She'd come so far from what she was before, I don't want her going back. That wasn't the woman I fell in love with!" Knuckles almost shone white as he gripped tighter onto the sheets below him. Yatsuhashi shook his head at the couple in the room, who both individually wanted to go and comfort him.

"Let him be for a minute," he whispered, if you could call what that sounded like a whisper. In his own time, the tears subsided and the sobbing passed, but the sadness remained. "We had better get started then Fox."

"Right." He wiped away at his tears with his arm, composed himself with a couple of deep breaths and then looked towards his partner, the glow on him as familiar it was the day he gained his sight. "What do we do?"

"All I need you to do is get yourself into a position you feel you could comfortably remain in for a long period of time, I don't know how long the process would take." Nodding, Fox lay on his back on the bed, head facing towards the door just in case Yatsuhashi needed to do anything there for the process. "Is there any item that holds a lot of value for the pair of you? The Plushie? The picture frame?" The frame in question was a simple silver thing, large enough for your average photo. The photo chosen was of the pair, their faces practically touching at the cheeks, both people staring directly into the camera with their mouths firmly wrapped around a long, red and white striped straw that were both plunged inside the Super-sized Neapolitan Iced Shake in front of them, hands holding a little handmade card with the words '6 Months' on it.

The photo was taken by the Arctic Fox Faunus Neo had a crush on when she and Fox went there for their 6 Month Anniversary. Turned out the Faunus, who was called Maggie by her friends, had a crush on her too and that if she had come back again alone she would have asked her on a date. Fate didn't play nice with her that day as Neo turned up with Fox in tow. But she found herself a boyfriend of her own soon after and they were both happy. The couples became good friends, talking and meeting up on occasion; this was one such time and Maggie couldn't have been happier for them. That wasn't what Fox wanted though.

"Second drawer on left set, on the right side. Should be a dark hoodie, and it should have the faintest smell of vanilla." He knew exactly where it was, he was the one who moved it not a couple of hours ago and no one else had been in the rom between then and now. Sure enough, it was still there. Viola handed him the item and he silently thanked her, clutching onto the dark fabric like a lifeline.

* * *

One week. That's all that had passed. Already, her body began to feel the strain of the torture. The shocking became significantly less and less frequent as she was becoming more and more compliant, but when they did come - because they always did - they were worse every time. The blue arcs of lightning shot from her body every time bringing her to her knees quicker than the last through pain and exhaustion. But they were good, because they'd give her Aura a boost. It was what she needed every now and again, to keep her going, keep her fighting. So she acted out on purpose multiple times just to get a shock and a bit of her energy back, until Watts noticed the pattern and behaviour. No longer would they administer a shock for things like that unless Salem gives the go-ahead. Now, it was just pure torture again.

She fought against it all, because she needed to escape. There was no other alternative she'd want to explore; those being 'Become their Puppet' or 'Die a Horrible Death'. Escaping was the only way out. At least, initially it was. Now that the shocking was finally getting to her and fatigue was taking its toll, she seemed to favour the first of the three options. It'd be playing into their hands, but it was the path of least resistance. And sometimes, after a life of finding obstacle after obstacle placed in front of you, you just need an easy route.

She swung her current weapon at the people who were attacking her. All of them men about 6'1", and very physically imposing. The one noticeable difference was their skin. It was black, with dark red veins and white tattoos all over - they looked like Human-Grimm hybrids. To an extent, they were. They were nothing more than the manifestation of Grimm from one of the puddles outside of the place she was being kept that formed itself into the shape of people. If the skin wasn't a clear enough giveaway, they must have no emotion at all, if they share that much in common with the Grimm around them. Her blade sliced through the guts of one man, his black blood spilling out for all of a second before he evaporated like the rest of the Grimm, they quickly she spun round and took the head of a second man and embedded her blade in the stomach of the third and final one. Rather than pulling the blade back out the way it came though, Neo grinned menacingly and backflipped away, holding on to the sword as she did. That brought the sword from where it was resting up through the Human-Grimm's body and out. When Neo looked back at her ex-target, it was falling apart into two almost symmetrical pieces, cleaved neatly in half right down the middle. She felt her grin and let it dissipate naturally; she wouldn't admit she enjoyed that, but she wouldn't be opposed to doing it again without consequence - killing people was how she made a living all those years ago.

"It seems you are finally learning to accept our orders Neo. I'm impressed, most people would rather fight for their freedom until their last breath, but you really are something else. Now, you must do one more thing before I can deem you ready." Neo heard the pool oozing out another being. There was only one, from what she could tell, so whatever it was, it was bound to be something big like an Alpha. She spun round, aiming her gaze high to meet the eyes of her enemy, but there were none there. She lowered her gaze, and there were no eyes meeting her at her eye level. Instead, they were below. A Grimm Child, looking no older than 10 years old.

Pink and brown were replaced by ivory as she stared at the woman on the side-lines with a look of 'Are you out of your mind?!'

"My child, if you cannot deal with a simple child now, then 10 years down the line that child may be the person who kills you where you stand. You eliminate all opposition and anyone else who gets in your way, no matter why they are there or who they may be." Neo wasn't having it. Even though it was a Grimm, she jumped forward and hugged the child-like creature close, nestling it close. "Do it" the woman commanded to the Doctor by her side, who slyly pressed the button.

' _They won't get me to do it_ ' she assured herself. ' _I will_ _ **not**_ _take the life of a child._ ' She heard the high pitched call of the bracelets all too late as they suddenly discharged everything they had into her. The lightning arced from her body in brilliant blue waves, connecting against anything nearby. It caused her muscles to spasm and contract, clutching on to the Grimm tighter than she ever thought was possible for her. The pain made her wish she could scream again. It's all she needed right now, to scream. Her breathing became heavy and her heart beat an odd rhythm after the shocking was over, her body reacting much more negatively to the shocking than before. She was nearing her limit. The realisation of what had truly happened occurred after a few breaths when black mist started drifting up from under her nose. She stared down, seeing the Child-Grimm dead in her arms. The electricity killed it. She lost it. Tears flooded down her cheeks, watching as the creature with a child-like appearance vanished into nothing.

"A pity, and here I thought you were making such good progress." Salem turned to Arthur and, without even changing expression or tone or anything really, spoke to him. "Put her back in her room. We'll let reality sink in for a little while, then we return again soon." He nodded as she took herself away.

"Come on then, you poor excuse of a killer" he demanded, picking her up by her shoulder and pushing her forward towards the room she was permanently kept in when she wasn't outside. It was 'her room', because it meant that she could do nothing in there that would disrupt anyone else outside of it. Locked away in her cell, essentially, she curled up and cried, letting her mind go blank.

' _I'm so uncomfortable_ ' she thought to herself.

* * *

"Neo never really went a week without wearing it for at least part of the day. It made her feel comfortable, it grounded her from her old reality." The gentle giant nodded, recalling those conversations themselves.

"Yes, that ought to be perfect. Now, I want you to try and focus on Neo and that memory, that feeling that you say she felt when she wore the hoodie. Focus on that." Shutting his milky eyes, he focussed hard on that emotion. Yatsuhashi held his hands on the side of Fox's head and did his best to aid in connecting the two.

* * *

' _I miss that room. I miss Fox. Hell, I miss that hoodie..._ ' Reminding herself of the dorm room was the one way she could cling to her past, the past she enjoyed and wanted. Sure, thinking about her parents and brother was fine, but with that came the sad memory of her Uncle Lang.

No, she needed to be positive. She needed comforting. She needed that hoodie.

* * *

Both parties gasped at the same time.

They both were thinking about that hoodie.

Suddenly there was an expanse on nothing. Echoes that built up before words were spoken, then trailing off after they were done. A floor, somehow, but no walls in sight. Well, no real sight at all. Much like everything, they were nothing.

"Fox?" The voice came from the void, off in the distance.

"Neo is that you?" another rang out from the other side. As the sources of the voices grew closer together, they both adopted corporeal forms. Their eyes met and they rushed into each other's arms. "I'm glad you're alright."

"You too, I was worried what you'd do when I went missing."

"Honestly, it wasn't the best thing in the world."

"Doesn't matter, you're here now and that is what matters." They both thought the same thing, and leaned into one another for a long kiss.

"You sound beautiful, did I ever tell you that?"

"I sound just like this when we communicate in our heads, why is _now_ the time you want to address that?"

"Because this is the first time I've heard you talk." Something clicked in his head. "Why can I see, and why can you talk?"

"Why wouldn't you be able to-" Another voice, Yatsuhashi's, rang from the nothing around them.

'You are in a Mindscape. The rules of the Living do not apply in here, per se. So long as you have thought, you can speak. If you have an imagination, you can see. I can't hold this for very long Fox, please get what you can from her.'

"Right." He turned to his girlfriend. "What is happening to you Ni?"

"They're torturing me. This woman named Salem wants me to be her personal assassin. Based on what she had heard before and what Roman said to her - by the way, Roman works for her now, not Cinder - she knows what I was capable of when I had no morals. They grew over time, but she wants that Neo back."

"Ni, there's only one of you."

"Is there Fox?" She sounded hurt admitting that, but to her it was the truth. "The girl I once was, the woman you fell in love with? Both gone. Only the killer I chose to be 10 years ago remains. And she will be coming for you. You were first on Salem's list for me." He felt his blood run colder, then he saw the world flicker around him. Yatsu couldn't hold this for very much longer.

"Why me?"

"Eliminating any immediate connections straight away, then I have no one to hold me back. It'd be you, then the team, then my family. I can't let that happen, I need to escape."

"Neo, there _is_ not escape! Ozpin obviously knew it was Salem; he never mentioned her name but going off what you've said it may be the same person. Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need you to submit to them."

"You're fucking insane!"

"I know, but you can't escape them without dying. You need to get you going by yourself as soon as possible. We'll fight for you, and we'll try and bring you back."

"I wish I could be onboard with that, but you have no idea how-"

"Trust me Neo. Please! I won't give up on you, you _need_ to trust me!" He looked pained to see her doubt him so, but another kiss calmed his uncertainty.

"I trust you Fox" she reassured him with a smile.

'Well, well, what's going on in here?' came another voice, one Neo instantly recognised as Arthur Watts. 'I'm afraid your little meeting has to be cancelled, our star pupil is needed back in classes.' The pair heard an ominous high pitched squeal that slowly rose in intensity and pitch.

"Neo, what is that?"

"Watts! Every time I step out of line, they shock me. It's been getting worse and worse every time, trying to get me to stop, but-"

Her sentence was instantly cut off when lightning flowed over her body like an Aura of its own, a painful Aura. A bolt jutted out from the rest, striking Fox in the chest and sending him flying backwards. She screamed, and the scream was like nails on a chalkboard to Fox. Why would you ever want to hear your girlfriend in pain like this, pain you couldn't even stop her from experiencing? It stopped, eventually, and the ice cream girl collapsed, Fox running over to cradle her. But as he got closer, the ground became like a treadmill, making it so he couldn't move any further forward.

"No, no, NO! Neo!" He reached out to comfort her, falling short. She looked up and saw him struggling against the irresistible pull of the void behind him.

"Fox, don't leave me!" She reached out as well, but the pair started drifting away from one another even faster, their consciousnesses parting abruptly.

"NEO!" he cried, desperately grabbing at nothing. All he heard was one last word as they were pulled away to opposite ends of the never ending darkness.

"FOX!"

* * *

The copper haired boy threw himself up screaming, the sound frightening the Faunus girl and her team leader as well. His panting was heavy and his brow almost coated with sweat.

' _I hate waking up like that..._ ' he thought to himself. The memory of her scream still etched in his mind as clear as day, but the familiarity of it couldn't be shaken. He remembered something like that, back on his Second... "Her..." he managed through puffs and pants, trying to regain control over his breathing. Yatsuhashi eased himself off the floor, having collapsed to his knees when the ordeal ended.

"What do you mean by 'her' Fox?" his teammate asked.

"In my original nightmare, back before the Museum, I heard my name being called. I remember it. Even back then, this was always going to happen. It was Neo's voice."

* * *

If you're wandering what song I'm mentioning Yatsuhashi sing, watch JD Sumner "Wayfaring Stranger" on your chosen online video playing webite. The notes he hits are like an entire Octave below what most men can sing, and that's how I imagine Yatsuhashi's singing voice is like. Make sure you are wearing some good headphones though, else you won't get the full experience of it all.

Unrelated to Senseless, I have a **New Story** in the works!  
It's currently being beta read by user **DioRezi** , who has been reading this story and made a suggestion at some point that I decided to act upon. And I gotta say, I wasn't expecting what came of it. I won't spoil who the tags are, because that'll ruin the surprise, but check it out when the first chapter goes live at some point later this week!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	52. The Black Queen Advances

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"I take it you managed to communicate with her then?" the Headmaster queried, hands placed on top of his cane. Professor Goodwitch stood beside him, arms folded, riding crop still in her hand.

"I did, yes sir."

"If you don't mind me asking, what was it that she said to you?"

"She mentioned Salem planned to turn her into a killer, just like she was before she met us." He felt the Aura around the pair shift slightly at the name. "So, Salem's a bad piece of work, then? Considering it made you two flinch."

"Yes," the Professor stated bluntly, stepping forward towards the blind boy, riding crop still in hand and arms still cross, "she truly is. We need to know everything Neo told you, this may be a chance to get to her and fight on her turf."

"It wouldn't be easy, and I dare say it wouldn't be a quick assault either. It'd take a long time to prepare something of that magnitude. We may have time for that, but judging by what you said to her, not a lot of time for the immediate threat. Correct?" Dark skin simply nodded. "Well then, I think we're in need of a meeting. I shall contact you as soon as I know, but for now please can you contact Teams RWBY and JNPR and inform them they are to meet with your team in the Infirmary at 7:00am tomorrow morning, no excuses. I only want a small group dealing with this, one that knows Neo. That will be all, Mr. Alistair" Another nod later, Fox got up and left, leaving the Tower for the second time that day. At least this time, due to the urgency of the matter, Ozpin and Goodwitch had the courtesy to come down to ground level, rather than waste time him climbing the Tower in that elevator. He went to type out a message to the Third Year teams, but then he realised that he could see anything anymore... again.

' _Back to the old ways, I guess,_ ' he mentally sighed.

"What did Ozpin say?" The sudden bass in his left ear caused the blind boy to jump nearly 6ft in the air.

"No sneaking up on me Yatsu!"

"I forgot," he pleaded innocently enough.

"Calling B.S. on that. But anyway, I need you to message RWBY and JNPR for me real quick. I would, but..." he gestured to his face.

"I understand." As he got out his Scroll to start scribing, Fox has an idea.

"Yatsu, do you mind doing me a small favour with that?"

* * *

Doing this now felt more and more autonomous as the days went on. It had been a couple of days for her since she spoke to Fox, but that didn't stop the conversation sticking like glue to her brain. That was good, she needed something to try and hold on to; even though the likelihood of that happening was miniscule, she needed to hope. But when she was doing this, hope was all but a distant memory.

To an outsider, Neo was fighting against nothing, just swinging away at thin air. To her, there were countless disposable enemies all climbing over each other at the chance to get a hit in on her.

The man with a nice fresh slash on his face from Neo's sword threw himself over the bodies of his fallen companions and aimed a shot at the girl, who was busy slicing away at a couple of the others. They stood no chance; she was dancing around them. The latest of her victims had been stabbed in the shoulder and opposite knee, causing him to crumple under his own failing body. The shot flew from the gun in hand, bullet on a direct course to impact her clean in the square of her back; no point in aiming for a headshot, she would be dead after a couple of shots anyway. The distinct sound of blood splattering brought a grin to his scarred face. But to his sheer surprise, the sound of the gunshot and the splatter of blood was intersected with the sound of shattering. Before he got a chance to fully grasp the fact that the person he'd killed was the man hidden by her and that Neo's illusion had been hit, not her, the woman was standing behind him. Tapping his shoulder to gain his attention, he swung around wildly with his gun hand with the aim of clubbing her in the side of the head with it. The swing wasn't even halfway done when the gun split in half, breaking it completely, and the man's upper arm flew from his body, soaking the already bloodied surroundings with more of the crimson liquid. His shouts of pain and agony were amplified when his other arm was removed completely. Part of her felt like leaving him to die of blood loss, but his screaming irritated her, so she shoved the blade through his gaping mouth and straight out the back of his throat.

"You're finally there Neo" Salem commented, making her way over to the scenes of her subject's latest battle. The images of the battle fizzled from her mind as the ashen skinned woman closed the glowing red amulet she carried, pocketing it and its contents. "I feel I can trust you enough to send you on your mission." The woman kneeled in respect for her, a gesture that pleased the dark Goddess. ' _Soon, Ozpin,_ ' she thought, ' _your world will fall again, and give way to_ _ **my**_ _world once more._ ' Caught in her own fantasy setting, she didn't see the smile gracing the smaller woman's face.

* * *

 **Y - 'Message from Fox direct from Ozpin. "Can everyone meet up in the Infirmary at 7:00am tomorrow morning. No excuses, it is urgent."'**

"There, everyone's been messaged." The blind boy smiled, giving thanks to his partner without words, not that they were needed. They made their way back from the Tower, talking idle talk and passing the time in silence. After only a couple of minutes, replies started coming in.

 **R - 'I'll be there! At least if the rest of the team can't be then I can relay info.'  
'Weiss said she will too!'**

"Why can I still hear her enthusiasm?"

"Ruby is just one of those people Fox."

 **J - 'I spoke to my team. We'll all be there. But why couldn't Fox ask himself?'**

"Would you like him to know now, or later?"

"If they're going to be there tomorrow, then they're going to find out anyway."

 **Y - 'You will understand. For now, just be there.'**

 **J - 'Right'** Sometime later, Yatsuhashi received one last message.

 **V - 'See you then :)'**

"That's everyone confirmed, with the exception of Yang and Blake." Fox simply nodded, he knew Ruby and Weiss could relay information back to those two fairly well, it wasn't too much of a hassle. For now, sleep was needed - especially after they day he'd had.

* * *

Neo walked through the crowds, ignoring the looks she was receiving. Some recognised her from before; "the girl who saved their village from the monster years ago", "the one who was friends with the son of Daichi". She knew that was what they were thinking, simple folk like this were always easy to read. Others were just staring at the girl with pink and brown hair. They were just being rude - they'd be first. She carried her parasol over one shoulder and a plain looking bag over the other. Neo found the place she was looking for, a small, secluded Inn to the East. Well, as secluded as you can be in Hai-no Hana.

"Greetings Madame!" The man seemed very friendly, holding his hands out as if wanting her to shake them upon their meeting. Hers remained planted firmly on her bag strap and parasol. Realising this, his hands clasped together. "It is such an honour to meet you at last. I have heard recounts of that day, you were so unbelievably brave; you and your team."

 _Team_

In a flash, the woman dropped her bag and forced the man against the wall with her parasol placed firmly across his throat, her eyes now matching the alignment of her hair.

"I'm sorry! Please, take what you want! I didn't mean any offence." The sweat practically materialised out of nothing on his forehead as the woman grabbed her Scroll and started typing away at the screen. He tried squirming, but she applied a little more pressure to the hold, keeping him there. When she was done, she turned the screen around for him to see what she had written. His eyes locked on to her to see if she was bluffing about that.

The smirk assured him she wasn't.

* * *

Sorry for the shorter chapter once more; a lot has been happening in my life over the past few days and, as such, writing this has taken a back seat. But there have been a couple of other things that have gone up from me in the last week to (hopefully) make up for my lack of work on here.

First, there was a new One Shot of mine I had uploaded at the start of the week set in the Nomad of Nowhere Universe called ' **The Last One** '. It was definitely interesting to write that 'little' story, especially with only two other stories on the site to compare with and against. Give it a look if you enjoy Rooster Teeth's little Western cartoon:  
 _s/12935605/1/The-Last-One_

The other thing was that I'd started a new RWBY story with **DioRezi** as Beta, as mentioned in last week's chapter, titled ' **Kenjutsu - A Winter and Raven Story** '. I mentioned how I didn't want to spoil the name or tags last week, so I didn't then. But now I've published the first chapter, so I can and will inform y'all of the name so that you can check it out yourselves. I did say in the story itself, but uploads for that one will be more spaced out that this story - maybe once a fortnight instead of weekly - to allow more time for writing a more in depth and solid story. Check it out, if this little summary got you interested in it:  
 _s/12934381/1/Kenjutsu-A-Winter-and-Raven-Story_

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	53. I See, said the Blind Man

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Morning came all too soon for the students. Whilst the vast majority wouldn't be up for at least another hour or so, there were some who had a meeting to go to before the majority of their peers stirred.

Coco stirred from her sleep feeling much better than she did before she had dozed off. The Aura shot she was given when she got here really helped to get her system working properly again, but one glance to her side revealed the real reason she felt right as rain this morning. Her girlfriend was sleeping beside her, on top of the covers of course so that Infirmary staff wouldn't complain, but still snuggling close and pooling her Aura into her all night long. Honestly, she felt she may have overdone it a bit, as the cute little bunny sleeping next to her started to look a little pale from doing so. Whilst reluctant to do so, she needed to make sure Velvet didn't harm herself trying to protect her. Coco shook her partner by the shoulders as gently and as firmly as she dared, bringing her round from her sleep gently rather than shaking her violently out of it. She spoke softly into her girlfriend's ears, the acute hearing not needed masses of volume to be impactful.

"Velves, hunny, time to get up." Brown eyes fluttered open, the owner letting their gaze settle on the beautiful woman lying next to her. Her eyes shut again and she smiled, leaning forward for a kiss. ' _Not gonna say no to that._ ' There was nothing overly passionate or romantic about the kiss, just a simple 'Good Morning' peck on the lips.

"Mm... morning Coco..."

"Morning Velv. You smell like morning breath."

"And your bed sucks; I'm pretty sure a spring popped in the night and jammed itself up my ass."

"Damn springs, getting all the fun before I do."

"Shut up and..." she was going to say sleep, but the yawn made her thoughts clear. A knock on the door broke both of their concentrations and cut the yawn off dead. The Faunus bounded off the bed, landing in the chair on the far side of the room. The girls relaxed when their team walked in, but that was only the calm before the storm.

"Oh my Oum, Fox!" Velvet was up straight away, staring into his face. Her eyes scanned, trying to process what she was seeing. Milky irises and greyed out pupils. "Fox..."

"Surprise" he deadpanned "I'm blind again."

"What?" This was news to Coco, who hadn't really woken up properly yet and also had her view of the boy obstructed by a pair of rather large rabbit ears. Even though her Mark was screaming _Loss_ at her, she didn't listen and focussed instead on the thoughts that flooded her own mind. "How the hell did that happen?" Wanting to offer an explanation, but not having the means to do so, Fox simply held his arms out to the side in an ever so slightly overzealous shrug.

"Your guess Coco. All I know is that it's got something to do with whatever's happening with Neo. It's breaking our link that the Parchment of Volentes made, and thus destroying the wish." Coco was going to ask what he knew about Neo, but decided against it - she'd had enough of an information overload this early in the morning to last at least until dinner. The four spoke idly for a few minutes before there was more knocking. Before anyone had a chance to speak, Fox dashed over to the bedside table and took Coco's slightly scratched, but otherwise intact sunglasses and threw them over her face. In stepped four Third Years, all of whom Coco and Velvet had no idea why they were there.

"Good morning all" Ren greeted, already looking eager for the day despite the fact the digital clock on the wall still had a 6 at the start of it. This was evidently a displeasure shared by at least one of the younger team as he carefully moved further into the room clasping the hand of one ginger haired powerhouse who was there with eyes firmly shut and a very obvious snoring sound coming from her mouth. Pyrrha and Jaune, whilst falling nearer Ren's side of the awake spectrum, still landed in 'not completely awake' category, slowly walked in after them, gently shutting the door and standing around with their team, eyelids still a little heavy. "Please do not draw any attention to the fact that she is still asleep, we will deal with that when Ozpin arrives. Also, say nothing about..." to emphasise his point of not even mentioning what he asked them not to mention, the silent ninja nodded his head down towards their hands. "We will not hear the end of it otherwise."

"Sorry, back up a bit; Ozpin? Why would he be coming here?" The blond looked at the senior team leader, then at the boy with her sunglasses on in the corner.

"You didn't tell them Fox?" he questioned, finding the sentence hard to believe even as he said it.

"It was on the list. As is another thing, but I'm not saying that now. This time, _they_ know and you don't." Fox was confrontational when he was irritated, stressed or tired. Right now, he was all three. His irritation was gone by the time more bodies showed up. Weiss was there, as was Team HLQN.

"No Rubes this morning Weiss? I thought she was the one pulling the strings on your team, not you" the fashionista joked. Much to her annoyance, the platinum haired girl flicked her hair back over her shoulder (she always seemed to do that when inconvenienced) and crossed her arms.

"Oh please. If it wasn't for me, Ruby would have failed every test we've had since starting here. She may be a good team leader, but she can be a poor student. I see it as my duty to make her better." The black and white haired girl from the Second Year team grinned and 'whispered' to her partner, even though she fully intended for all party's present to hear her comment.

"Well, at least we know who's the Dom in _that_ relationship." The shade of red Weiss turned at the comment almost made up for the fact that Ruby wasn't currently present, her cheeks stained a glorious and vibrant crimson. The three full teams all laughed, leaving the odd one out standing like a glowing beacon of red in the middle of them all. Another knock focussed their attention away from what caused Weiss to freeze up in embarrassment to the grey haired gentleman that walked in the room, mug in hand and looking no different to when else he was seen.

"Good morning to you all. I am glad you are all enjoying yourself, but please be thoughtful of your surroundings; this is an Infirmary and I'm not sure other in-patients would be best pleased to be woken to the sound of laughter before 7:00am." Everyone tried to remain as silent as they could for as long as possible." Ms. Schnee, I know my eyesight may be fading slightly, but I don't seem to see any of your teammates around. I assume Fox gave you the information to be here at 7:00 as a matter of importance as you are here, but why aren't the rest of RWBY?"

"Ruby was _insistent_ that she'd get Blake and Yang here, even if she had to carry them. Well, they didn't know about this before they went out last night - what with it being the last night they _could_ go out before our semester starts - and they came back late and a little bit tipsy. I tried telling Ruby that we could tell them when they wake up, but she wasn't having it. They are all on their way here; Ruby's making good of her promise." The Headmaster took a sip as he responded with scepticism.

"I see." Velvet's head turned towards a faint grunting and panting noise coming from down the hall - inaudible for humans at present, but not for long. Nylan's head followed soon after; she didn't have the acute hearing of Velvet, but hers was still a darn sight better than her non-Faunus friends and teammates. Ozpin's attention was then drawn to Team HLQN, who were all sitting to one side of the room directly opposite the door. "And may I ask why you four are here? I'm sure I recalled asking for only Team's JNPR and RWBY to be here." Before any of the Second Years could speak, Fox answered.

"That was on me, sir. I couldn't send a message so I asked Yatsuhashi to send it to them. Whilst there, I requested that he send it to Team HLQN as well. They're good friends of ours, they're very close to Neo." Not even speaking, the green clad man looked over at the youngest team, waiting for their response.

"I did ask everyone first sir," Viola started, feeling a little nervous at the confrontational look the normally very calm and non-confrontational Ozpin was giving her. "I said that if one of us didn't want to go through with this, then we wouldn't pressure them and we'd stay away from it all. The agreement was unanimous."

"Very well, but you realise that this task may be way above your level of skill and experience, alright? I asked for these three teams as they are some of the best - if not, _the_ best - teams I have at my school at this moment in time in their respective years, and they are close enough to Ms. Russet that I consider their-"

"Sir, _we_ are close to Neo as well!" Lulu snapped back, a move she would most likely reserve for other students who irked her, but never a teacher. "Without her, lots of aspects of our team wouldn't be here. We owe her a lot, this would be the least we would do for her." He sighed, taking another loud sip.

"I do not appreciate the fact you spoke back at me, but I do appreciate your enthusiasm and willingness. I will allow it, but I'd like to see you in my office after it is all done Ms. Persimmon, understood?" She nodded, but her ears were drawn to the sound of panting nearby, something very much more noticeable than before. As the blinds in the room were drawn, all those in the room could see was a large mass of shadow moving across the window with grunts and strains. Weiss rolled her eyes and opened the door, letting Ruby in - the young girl carrying her sister and her sister's girlfriend and Mate on her shoulders.

"Damn Rubes!" Coco said unintentionally but without regret, "that's impressive. Where'd you carry them from?"

"Dorm room..." he puffed, placing them in the nearest chair. "They wouldn't wake, so I carried them. That's the nice part done. Now..." she gave her partner a smirk and nod, who returned the expression. She gestured everyone to step back as she pulled out her rapier and spun the chamber to Ice Dust. With a small thrust into the ground, ice crept its way towards the pair and enveloped them from the chest down in two separate blocks of ice. The girls screamed at the sudden sting of cold that hit them, then promptly stopped and looked around at the many faces staring at them with grins.

"Weiss... explain." The blonde's hair started to glow and the ice started melting, her semblance making quick work of the sculpture she'd involuntarily become.

"Ms. Schnee will not be doing the explaining, Ms. Xiao Long. That honour goes to me." The fire in her eyes was snuffed in an instant as Yang saw Ozpin. It came back slightly as another wave of Ice Dust hit her, re-freezing the ice already around her.

"And that's what you get for having Ruby literally carry your sorry behinds here. Now listen, and I might not keep reapplying the ice after a while." A low growl came from the blonde's lips, but nothing that warranted any further encasing.

"Ms. Russet, Neo to most of you, was recently captured when the attack on the school occurred. The White Fang sent children to storm the school, clearly with the sole purpose of distracting as many people as they could whilst the culprits caught Neo and took her away. According to Mr. Alistair's conversation he managed to have with Neo, she was their main objective that day, which is why the attack never lasted for long - they had what they needed very quickly."

"They have been doing things to Neo" Fox added, standing from his chair. "Things that can only be classed as torture. But it was all in the hopes of achieving their goal. They needed her as a cold-blooded, merciless killer again. One with lots of skill and without remorse. The side effects of this torture are pretty clear to see..." he removed the sunglasses, showing off his milky eyes to those unaware of his current predicament. "Pun not intended" he added with a smirk. There were gasps from nearly everyone present.

"Mr. Alistair made sure to tell Neo that she should try and give in as soon as she possibly could. It may sound ridiculous at first, but in hindsight makes a lot of logical sense. Whatever they have done to her, the longer we leave it the more time it has to settle in and become part of her way of life once more. It does also mean, however, that an attack on the school - or at the very least, on Team CFVY - is imminent. That is why I wanted to speak with you now, so that we had as little time between knowing the plan and enacting it as possible. Now, let's begin."

* * *

Neo spent time in the room she had cleaning and sharpening her blade. It had grown dirty from the stains that had accumulated over the past hours on the walk in and she needed to get rid of them. Most of them, at least - battle damage always made a weapon look more intimidating providing it didn't hinder its performance.

The village was quiet.

The room she was in was small and uninteresting, a far cry from the room she'd spent the past 18 days inside - that was large and intimidating AND a torture chamber.

Her bag was all but emptied, her belongings laid out on the bed.

Cleaning and sharpening utensils, as one would expect. Her Scroll. A decent amount of Lien on the off chance she needed to use it. A single polaroid photograph of Team CFVY, back when the brown coloured quartet were still in their first year of Beacon, the blind boy's face circled with a red marker.

He was her target. Neo needed to get to him. Only then would she be appeased.

But first; her Hit List, the penultimate item in her bag. On it, targets. Top of her list, above everyone else - even Fox - wasn't a person, but an order.

 **Hai-no Hana. Send them a message.**

Her irises shifted colour, swapping sides like they always did in combat, as she stared at the final item from her bag. And getting up to stare out of the small window in her room down at the laughing children below with an confident smirk on her face, she knew just who to use this on.

* * *

Yeah... that's not good

Things are coming to the forefront now with both Salem's plans for Neo in action, and the four Teams creating the plan to combat it with Ozpin.

I want to take the time to plug myself again... [that sounded **_a lot_** better in my head]  
My story with **DioRezi** , ' **Kenjutsu - A Winter and Raven Story** ', is up live now, so check out the first chapter now, and be sure to keep an eye out within the next couple of days for Chapter 2

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated

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 _For the astute, you might notice something coming up..._


	54. Giving Her the Warm Fuzzies

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The briefing had taken a little longer than anticipated, what with the plans needing to be moved around on account of HLQN's inclusion, but they were all done by about 7:55. The plan was very simple and unambitious in its approach; Team CFVY was to remain in at least pairs throughout their day, staying near classes where either RWBY and JNPR or Team HLQN were (preferably the former, as Ozpin strongly suggested, still not overly pleased with HLQN's inclusion) or going with a combat ready Professor. With any luck, and he couldn't believe he was saying this, Neo would attack them sooner rather than later, meaning that CFVY could get a taste at a real mission rather than being on the defensive back at Beacon.

The day of the briefing was full of stress.

Ozpin needed to shoot off early, as Initiation was commencing at 9:30 at the launch pads on the cliffs of the Emerald Forest - a place he knew they were all familiar with. Coco seemed fairly eager to join the man in watching "Newbies getting thrown off a cliff and fighting for their lives" - her words, not his - but the Headmaster simply stated that he was not planning on risking her life by taking her out onto a completely exposed hilltop where there was no cover basically offering her up to Neo on a silver platter.

"I'm sure she'd _love_ to see me splayed out on a silver platter..." she mumbled to herself, earning her an elbow to the ribs from her girlfriend and a subtle raised eyebrow from the Headmaster, who she didn't know heard her comment.

"On top of that, Ms. Adel, you are still slated to be bed rest until later today, by which point the 'Newbies' would have already been 'thrown off the cliff' and most would have found their partners already. Sorry to disappoint." He wasn't, but it was only proper to sound like he was. HLQN couldn't stay around for long either, being only Second Years, their classes started up at the same time as the new First Years' did, so they too needed to shoot off early. They bid their elders adue and headed back to their dorm to get changed for classes, but not before Nylan rushed back in and caught Fox in a Yang-level bear hug. For her size, she was incredibly strong.

"We're going to do this Fox! Just you watch." She retracted to look him in the eyes, a sudden intake of breath coming from her when she momentarily forgot about his whole 'blind again' thing at the start of the briefing and at her poor choice of words. "My bad... I forgot..."

"It's alright. You might take some time adjusting, but you didn't know me to be anything else. My team will probably get used to it quicker because they knew me when I was blind before. Hopefully though, it's not permanent." She smiled a reassuring smile, then rubbed her cheek on his chest quickly.

"Look after yourself, Scars."

"You sure are a far cry from the shy girl Neo introduced to me a year ago" he replied with a slight giggle and a ruffle of her hair. "I will. For myself, and for Neo." In a display of speed that rivalled even Ruby, Nylan was out of the door again. JNPR left soon after as well, with their blond leader apologising to Fox for his comment over text the day prior. Water under the bridge, and all was forgiven and forgotten. That left Teams CFVY and RWBY. The eight of them talked about whatever subjects came to mind, actively trying to avoid the subject of Neo, though efforts were fruitless on multiple occasions. Suddenly, as if an internal alarm went off, the youngest of the eight stood up and started sweating.

"Oh no, no, nononono, no!"

"Rubes? Rubes! What's up? Talk to me." Big sister mode was activated, but alas; Weiss' Trap Card 'Big Block of Ice' was still in play, so its effects were all but negated. She couldn't give her little sister a comfort hug - one of a few people who ever has or would get the privilege of receiving one - and she couldn't let her natural body heat warm her up and make her feel cosy.

"I just remembered that I promised I would go and see my friends back from when I was at Signal before they went off for initiation this morning but I was so caught up in doing this for you guys that it completely slipped my mind even when Ozpin said that he was going to the Emerald Forest just like we did back when we first started and now I feel like a really bad friend and so I think I really need to go and see them before I make things any worse for myself okay bye guys good luck!" A flash of red and an entire room completely covered in rose petals later, and Ruby was gone. The 7ft giant was the first to speak after that transpired.

"I must admit, I am incredibly surprised at how fast Ruby can talk. And that she said that all in one breath."

"Have you seen Rubes, Yatsu? She is like the epitome of hyperactive and awkward. I should know, I've known her all her life, literally when she was ya-" caught in the moment again, the fact the blonde brawler was trapped escaped her mind until conveniently and comically appropriate to remember. "Urgh, Weiss, can you get this thing off of me now. _I'm_ starting to get cold, and that's saying something. Oum only knows what Blakey's feeling like."

"C-c-cant feel m-m-my t-t-toes any-m-m-more" she shivered violently, her natural introverted nature overtaking the outgoing one that shone through every now and again ever since she and Yang became Mates and making her hide her cold through gritted teeth and sheer willpower not to make a sound. This was the first anyone had paid attention to the situation that Blake and Yang were in since it first happened, especially Yang.

"Jeez, Blake, you're turning blue! Y'know what? Screw this!" There was no buffering time between the words hitting everyone's ears and the temperature of the room jumping 20 degrees or so. Eyes now burnt crimson and hair glowed like fire as the ice around Yang melted away and cracked, letting her break herself out of the frozen block a couple of seconds later, sending fragments of it all over the room - some shattering, other bits impacting and falling to the floor to melt in the near future. She wound up a punch and smacked Blake's block with a left hook - even for her non-dominant hand, she made a hefty dent in the ice - then followed that up with a screaming right to the same spot, breaking her girlfriend's frozen prison in two swings. She caught her as she fell, feeling her skin against her own. "Damn it, she's as cold as your heart, Weiss!" she managed, the one and only joke she thought about making with regards to the situation. The Schnee Heiress, much to everyone's surprise, didn't bite back. It _was_ her fault Blake was like this, she deserved at least some punishment for it. "I couldn't even feel her, both our Marks were covering in ice!"

"Yang, get her in here" Coco started, adjusting herself to get out of the bed. "It ought to help."

"Not in these wet clothes it won't." On cue, she started glowing brighter and harder to aid in warming the Faunus up and drying her clothes. Her hair was bordering on white with the glow now, but on her shoulder the Mark still shone the brilliant yellow associated with the brawler. Through it, she sent as many positive and warm thoughts as she could.

 _Ecstasy. Sunshine. Protection. Love. Cherish._

"N-n-"

"Ah, ah Blake, you just stay there and stay quiet. There we go." Yang lowered the now-warmer and drier Cat Faunus into Coco's bed, the fashionista standing back to let the partners have their space, her head still not 100% so the act of standing caused the blood to vacate her head if only for a second - long enough for her to stumble slightly as she leant backwards. "It's gonna be alright sweetie. I'm here as personal heater if you need." A small smile came to be between two growing rosy cheeks and a thought was sent from the woman to her partner beside her.

 _Maternal._

"Yeah, yeah, I know. We've discussed." She turned to the remaining five in the room - "Later" - then back to Blake. "Now, you need to rest a little and warm up again."

"Night watch..." she managed to get her thoughts out this time, but rather than them being taken seriously, Yang laughed. Coco and even Yatsuhashi joined in, much to the confusion of the rest.

"Blake, do you know what time it is?" She shook her head, either not knowing about the clock nearby or simply not remembering its existence. "It's 8:24. In the morning. Nightfall is at like 7:45, or there about; we've got practically all day to get you warm and recovered. _Then_ we can think about night watch duties." With a peck on the nose, the blonde muttered something along the lines of "My silly little kitty Cat" before moving her attention to Weiss, the nice Yang being replaced by the no-nonsense, get-shit-done-and-get-it-done-fast Yang. "You four can head out. I need to talk with the Ice Queen here." Complying, CFVY vacated the room despite the fact Coco was meant to be in there for another few hours or so.

* * *

Team CFVY were huddled together in the Common Room the next morning, all sipping their own personal cups of coffee. Yatsuhashi's was simple, a black coffee with one sugar. Coco's made up for the normality by being rather extravagant in contrast - a large cappuccino with cream instead of milk and poured in such a way that her emblem adorned the top of the beverage. No one knew how she did it, not even Velvet - not for a lack of trying mind you. Apparently it was "an Adel Family Secret that was to be taken to their graves should they not find a suitable partner, and said partner could only learn it after marriage" as the beret wearer constantly reminded Velvet each time she attempted to get the secret out.

Speaking of; Velvet favoured tea for the first couple of years at Beacon but she and Yatsuhashi found something on one of their trips to Hai-no Hana. In a neighbouring village a few miles North of Yatsuhashi's village was one that served Yuanyang - a drink that combined coffee with Orient's Pearl style milk-tea. It tasted very nice, but what drew Velvet's eyes were the tales as to why the name Yuanyang was given. It referred to the Ducks native to Anima, as they are symbols of conjugal love in their culture, due to the fact the birds usually appear in pairs and the male and female look very different. Velvet couldn't describe hers and Coco's relationship any better, and for it to be brought together in a drink that combined her favourite drink of tea with the rest of the team's preference for coffee was just perfect. She liked the drink, and learned how to make it so she could treat herself to one from time to time, but still at this moment was sipping away quite merrily with a cup of tea in hand.

Fox had... no cup. Nor did he ever have a cup. Instead, he had a spoon and a tub of Neapolitan ice cream and was shovelling it away like nobody was watching. Sadly for him, there were people watching. Sadly for them, he couldn't see them staring, so he didn't care.

"That's not going to help, you know that."

"Yeah, I know. But I miss her Coco. _This,_ " he emphasised by holding the tub up in the air, "is what I have to remind me of her, considering I can't see any of the photos we've taken over the past year and a bit anymore." In frustration, he slammed the tub back down along with the spoon in the other hand and groaned, the impact on the table causing a bit of Coco's drink to spill, the emblem on her drink now nothing more than a multi-coloured mess in a cup and partially on the table. "I don't want to lose her too. I've lost too much. I can't live without us..."

"Fox, it's going to be alright" Velvet said, rubbing his shoulder to comfort him. "Remember back when you first died when I told you that we have always fought through all the negativity in our lives and came out stronger on the other side? Well, this time is no different. Only this time, you're fighting for two. Neo's counting on you to be strong, so that she can make it through as well. Come on; be strong. For all our sakes." She pulled him in close for a one-handed hug, his head now resting in the crook of her shoulder. Instinctively, she leaned down and pressed a quick and gentle kiss on his head with a smile, bringing him out of his stuper as well.

"You seem to always know what to say Velvs. Thank you."

"Any time." Fox's Scroll buzzed on the table, much to the confusion of everyone present.

"That's weird, everyone I know who has my number knows that I won't be able to see it, right? Not until I reactivate that text-to-voice-"

"It's from Neo!" The dual haired team leader snatched the phone as quick as she could and opened up the message.

 **N - '3** ** _files attached. Click_** ** _here_** ** _to view_** **'**

Her expression changed instantly to one of horror, almost to the point of throwing the phone down in disgust. "What the fu... Neo..."

"Coco, what was on there?" She said nothing, only heavy breaths could be heard. "Coco, what was on my Scroll?"

* * *

I know it's technically a day early, but who cares? I'm going to say this anyway:

 **HAPPY BIRTHDAY 'SENSELESS'! {insert confetti, party poppers and canned cheering}**

As of this chapter, **'Senseless'** has been going for exactly 1 Year! That is insane, I did that... holy shit, I did that...

I need a minute... or two... or twelve, I dunno...

1 Year... And in that time, so many people have seen this story - approaching _30,000 views!_ \- and thought it good enough to be part of their favourites, or they're following the story along as I upload each chapter week after week. You guys are such a great supportive network, and I honestly can't thank you enough for what you've done for me!

I hope you've all been enjoying the recent chapters. I know the word count has been dropping a little as of late, but I do aim to pick it back up again once things start to pick up the pace.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated  
Thanks again for One Year of **'Senseless'**


	55. Taking Things In Halves

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Neo had climbed up to the top of the Watchtower in the middle of Hai-no Hana. It was a perfect vantage point, and she could take as many shots from the top as she needed without fear of being discovered or captured if she was. She readied herself, aimed through the telescopic lens she had, and started shooting.

 **~000~**

Fifteen minutes. That's all it took. That was all she needed to get the job done. There were pillars of smoke rising from places were fires were started just before she began. The village sounded all but dead - there was no human sound up here, just the faint crackles of fire and the wind flowing through the streets. She peered over the edge at the expanse in front of the tower. There were a large pile of people, all still laying there in pools of red, positioned in such a way that they spelt out words. She grabbed her things and jumped down to the ground, her Aura cushioning the fall from that height, as she landed by the head of the young boy curled in a ball at the end of them all. Smirking, she tapped the floor by his head three times with her parasol, then proceeded to walk away. Beacon wasn't too far away, maybe three days walk at best from now, and that could be cut down if she used a Bullhead.

Almost forgetting why she made a stop here, she sent a quick message to Fox with three of the best photos she'd taken attached to it. One was a panoramic shot of Hai-no Hana with the fires and pillars of smoke everywhere, one was of Neo holding a child with her sword from the parasol digging into her throat and the last was all the people she had gathered laying on the floor to spell out a message.

 **I'M COMING FOR YOU.**

* * *

"How far away is Hai-no again Yatsu?"

"No more than three days away, that's walking. I doubt she'll walk all of the way here." Fox paled, his dark skin turning a shade or two lighter.

With a bit of trouble, he managed to say "So, she could be here any time within the next three days?" Now, Team CFVY were a strong bunch. They had accomplished a lot in their time at Beacon and were argueably the strongest team in their year. And that was before it became CFVYN. But even they shivered at the prospect of facing off against Neo, who they have only ever fought against as a team once, and she thoroughly kicked their asses. That was before they became a team. Now she knows their moves, their fighting styles, their tactics, basically everything about them - and she was working against them.

"It's going to take a bloody miracle to come out of this alive..." Velvet commented, expressing everyone else's thoughts. They even brought themselves closer together, keeping each other close for protection against the ice cream girl's wrath, touching shoulder to shoulder for added ease of mind. Fox pulled two more spoons out of a pocket and handed them to his partner and his leader. Velvet summoned a hard light construct of a spoon from her camera box. They all collectively started eating the ice cream from the tub in front of them. No wonder Neo likes this stuff so much...

* * *

Neo had never entered Vale from the road. It was either via the air or the docks, never the roads leading in. It was different, which was good. It meant they wouldn't be expecting her this way. It also meant that the cheaper inns and hotels were closer, rather than having to trek halfway across the city to get to them. She entered an establishment, the Notell Hotel on the outer edges of Vale, and walked up to the man behind the desk. He was a short tanned man with apple green eyes and rusty coloured hair. To Neo, he didn't look like much of a fighter, so she could do a bit of persuading if she needed to. She produced her Scroll from her pocket and began typing her initial request as the man spoke.

"Good evenin', welcome to Notell."

 **One person, one night please.**

"Very well m'dam." he reached behind him and grabbed a key off the hook that read 'Room 18' and handed it to Neo. "That will be 30 Lien for the night." It wasn't a bad price in her eyes, so she wasn't going to haggle. She took the keys and handed over three 10 Lien notes, then headed up to her room. She turned down a hallway and headed towards her room. As she fiddled with her keys and eventually opened the door to go in, a thud was heard on the door a couple of rooms down. Being curious / nosey, she leaned backward and peered down the hall to see the commotion. The fact she felt her eyes switch to vanilla white meant she knew what she was seing wasn't a trick.

"I still haven't gotten used to this yet Cin. I miss depth perception." That voice, so unmistakable.

" _Told you... just... focus..._ " came the hoarse reply of the other voice, followed by a nasty bout of coughing.

"Easy, easy. And I told _you_ to stop talking so much, you'll make it worse." Neo saw the two making their way down the hall, backs to her. The exposed back tattoo of one was enough evidence to go off of, as was the mint green hair of the other, so she decided to silently slip into her room and hope they didn't cross paths again. She no longer worked with or for them, but that didn't mean what they did to her would be going away any time soon. With a violent shake of the head, she banished their presence from her mind and instead focussed on the tasks at hand; getting to Beacon. That'd be tomorrow's main task. For now, her task was to rest and get her energy for tomorrow.

* * *

Velvet and Fox had experienced many 4:00am's at Beacon. There was something very relaxing about them. The complete relaxation that came with not having to worry about anyone else interupting them, the lack of sounds from students walking around and sparring, or the hustle and bustle of everyday life in Vale, even the sounds of the animals of the night or early morning - they weren't there. At that point, the only people awake who would be making any type of noise was a blind and scarred young man and a young woman with rabbit ears. They both sat on the rooftop of one of the buildings overlooking the campus and finishing with Vale on the far horizon. The pair of them were laughing, clearly not worrying about their old friend appearing behind them at any moment, although the boy did stop his train of thought and his mind wondered onto that path on a couple of occasions. The latest time that happened, she'd had enough.

"Fox, stop it!" the Faunus commanded, slapping his exposed forearm. "And before you say it, you know damn well what! She is strong, but she is human. She needs sleep."

"She knew and used to regularly performed the Uberman Sleep Cycle. That means 20 minute rests and she's back to ripe perkiness."

"Yeah, she _used to_ , Fox. I don't recall her ever using it when she was here. So she'll be out of practice on it, 1. 2, she walked basically the entire day yesterday, I assume. She's going to want to collapse and curl up for the night."

"Alright fine, I'll relax."

"Good. We need it. Neo is most likely in Vale right now, if not very close." Fox muttered a disgruntled "You're not helping..." under his breath that, thanks to the extra pair of ears on her head, the Faunus heard him say but chose to ignore it and continue on. "She is going to be on us within the next few days, we all know this. So whilst we have every right to be on edge a bit, we don't need to be in a perpetual state of panic. I want you to ease off Fox. We're all going to need you front and centre when this goes down."

The sarcasm that came from the "Yay" Fox gave was extraordinary. "I get to stand centre stage and watch as my girlfriend kills me." That remark earned him another smack, this time on the head. "Ow! Jeez Velv, how strong are you?"

"Stronger than I seem; you've got Coco to thank for that. But be thankful I didn't kick you, I would have had to send you to the Infirmary. That's beside the point, Neo is not going to kill you. We won't let her, and you wouldn't go down that easily. Yeah, she threw us around like ragdolls on her own when she got you on that date and she wasn't even trying. Now she'll be prepared and it would be much worse. She'd be going for the kill as well."

Fox tried to interject, stating "How is this meant to make me feel better Velvet?", but she wasn't finished and barely gave him time to speak.

"But so are we. Not only do we have a plan and know what we're doing, we're not alone. She's not going to be fighting against four individuals, she'll be combatting four _teams_. All we need to do is snap her out of whatever trance she's in. And we have back-up plans. We've got this."

"You enthusiastic little so-and-so," he teased, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her down to where he was sitting into a side hug "I know we complain every now and again about you hanging around with Ruby too much, but I guess it has its benefits."

"Yeah," she replied, hugging his stomach and resting her head on his shoulder "I guess so." The pair remained there for minutes on end in silence, watching as the scenery remained unmoving for the entire time they were there.

"Y'know Velvet, I know we discussed this a lot, I have said my piece on the matter and so have you, but I still think we would have made a good couple."

"Yeah, _now_ we would be." She moved, releasing her grip and sitting away from him. "If I had said yes the first time you asked, I would have been a shy mess and you would have been unable to see anything. We would have been a shit couple."

"Hey, that's not fa-"

"Fox, we would have been such a shit couple. Honestly, as much as I agree we may have been an okay couple after a few months - or years, I prefer the arrangement we have."

"I know, me too. Well, I mean, I will be once Neo's back. Heck, if I can get my sight back, that'd be great too."

"But besides all of that, both of them have done wonders for us since we've been with them. Neo helped you become the person you are Coco broke me out of my shell as well."

"She also fucked your brains out one time and you've been hooked ever since."

"Shut up Fox, you would be hooked too if you were on the receiving end. She knows how to do things I've only ever seen other Faunus do, so you'd have a lot to live up to if we were a couple."

"Okay, okay, TMI Velvet." His blank eyes stared at her brown ones, neither willing to break first. Fox saw her Aura, the deep scarlet pool of energy inside her, and tried to wait out the laugh he felt coming through his body, just as he saw one rising through hers. Neither won that. They both started laughing together, falling down onto the rooftop and laying on their back riding out the giggles until they were back to normal.

"I like sleep and all, but I miss our 4:00am talks."

"Agreed" he sighed, resting his head down on the floor.

* * *

With nothing left in the room, Neo locked the door and headed back, giving the person at the front desk the keys. Shifts had changed and instead was a woman with midnight blue hair and a pair of equally dark blue, thick rimmed glasses. The woman at the desk smiled, though it was very obviously a forced one, and waved her off. Walking away from there, she was glad she hadn't seen the other two again as she left, though her mind still questioned their motives for being there. She knew that they weren't working for Salem anymore, a fact made painfully clear with her ever so casual 'hints' at their fate. Did the woman ever think they'd escape? Had she let them? Did she know they were alive?

There weren't the questions she needed answering. Bag on back, she marched on towards the centre of the Kingdom, towards the nearest landing pad. She had someone to meet up in Beacon, someone who was dying to see her.

"I told you." The other woman gave only a "Tsk" as a reply. "Come on Cinder, there's nothing to worry about. Honestly, if She had wanted Neo to kill us, then we'd know. It was chance that we're in the same place, and I don't think she saw us."

" _Maybe's... not... goo-_ " another round of throaty coughs from the one well-spoken seductress.

"Stop overworking your voice!" Before the words reached her mouth, Emerald's fisted curled tightly into balls at her sides. "We can't afford lose any more of ourselves." In the spur of the moment, she absentmindedly rubbed the left side of her face, right over where her eye used to be. "She took too much already..."

* * *

Salem played with the glowing red amulet around her neck, enjoying the sensation of the just being there.

It was the least she could have done, by far.

She recalled when three of those fools returned to her after trying (and subsequently failing) to capture Neo the first time.

* * *

The dark Goddess noted that only three returned, questioning the whereabouts of Mercury not because she cared, but merely out of curiosity at what they'd say; unsurprisingly, she knew the answer before she even asked the question.

"Mercury is dead" Cinder replied, not a hint of emotion in her words. Daerk was nursing a headache from his rock-induced state of unconsciousness and Emerald not only had pain from being smacked against a wall, but also the emotional strain of watching as her partner was killed before her very eyes. Eyes that were red from crying most of the way over. Salem shrugged slightly and stood from her chair at the head of the table, pacing ever so slowly to the large windows beyond their seats.

"Oh my, what a shame." Emotions suddenly surfaced in Cinder.

"Does his death mean nothing to you?" The side stare from the ashen skinned woman would have made almost all fear her in an instant. Cinder was not 'almost all'. She was naturally assertive, she was attractive (and she knew it) and could talk her way out of almost any situation, fighting her way out of the ones where the act of talking it out wasn't an option. And to add the cherry on top of the proverbial cake, she had part of the Maiden's powers. She could be a Goddess among the men with the power she held.

But she wasn't in her comfort zone, nor was she speaking to a low level thug. She faced her boss, _the_ boss.

"No, it doesn't. Human interactions should make them weak, and it is working. Even in such a short time, she weakens. Her friendships grown and she becomes vulnerable. But similarly, it makes _you_ weak. That's not what you wanted Cinder; remember what you wanted."

 **~000~**

"Five attempts..." She drifted ever closer to the three people kneeling before her. "You have failed to capture her after five seperate attempts. One girl can't be that difficult to manage."

"To be fair, Your Darkness," Daerk stuttered, his nervousness spilling over at her presence. As much as she hated doing it in here, she will enjoy watching this man suffer. Especially as he kept using that infuriating title with her. "we did have trouble getting her alone; that would have made things easier." Daerk wasn't well versed in people with unlocked Auras, he had very much a one-track mind when the thing that was the Parchment of Volentes came into his life. It was all he ever seemed to focus on. Which is good, considering that Geists can be quiet, but not completely silent. Cinder and Emerald noticed, but said nothing - they had learned not to. "We just need a little more time, then she is ours." His last mistake.

"Ours? No, she is mine. Daerk, you know nothing of what I plan for this world. Someone like her is essential for what I need. She is strong and she is an exceptional killer, if what these two have told me is anything to go by." The other two females in the room lowered their heads, focussing only on the ground. In the back of the room, Tyrian could be heard 'silently' giggling to himself at what was about to happen. "You are not."

"I... what?"

"You aren't needed. It was entertaining to think someone like you would have the audacity to come to me for help, what with no powers to speak of - active or untapped. I played along. But now you are nothing more than a burden to my plans. Your selfish goals have possessed your every waking thought, and so-"

" _My_ selfish thoughts? You plan to destroy everything, leaving only you and the Grimm left! That is beyond selfish!"

"That is self- _less_. I aim to return the world to how it should be, its natural state. You want control over something that is unnatural. The thoughts you have possess your every waking thought," she repeated, sounding even more menacing than she did before, her red eyes burning with a light that sparked fear into anyone with a soul, "and so I seem it only fitting that you should die this way."

"I don't u-" was all he could manage before the Geist flew into his body via his back, shocking a long and terrified gasp out of him. "No, please!"

"You beg? How pitiful." Not wanting any part of this to physically impact her, she shoved him off to one side of the room, his weakened body flung nearly 10 metres away with a mere shove on her part. "As for you two, I just about have enough patience for one more attempt at this with you. I can't promise that I will not kill you - you are very useful even when you aren't messing things up - but I'm sure this enough would be insentive to do as I ask." Having walked between them, Salem's hands rested on both of their chins and lifted them up to stare at Daerk's form off in the distance.

His body was twitching violently, the screams that were coming through often cut short by them either transforming into roars of a Grimm or just outright stopping. His veins were darkening, even from the great distance between them in the dimly lit room it was noticeable. His skin became darker, blotches of black growing from everywhere until his skin was nothing more than darkness. His body tried moving, but it was clear he was not in control anymore - the Geist had taken control. As a black mist escaped from him, he started floating. As he did, his arms spread wide, as if he was being crucified. Daerk's cornflower blue eyes now shone with a Grimm-like amber light as he... it stared at the two by Salem's feet.

"I hope you understand Cinder, Emerald, that I won't accept failure from you again." With that, Daerk's body was pulled outwards by internal forces, essentially having the Geist ripping the man in half from the inside. His corpse, now in various different parts, fell to the floor with an uneasy sound like wet meat being slapped onto a surface. Cinder felt herself wanting to throw up, but what little of the Maiden's powers she had made her burn that away as it tried to escape her throat.

 **~000~**

"This is most unexpected" she commented. "And who might you be?"

"Me? Why, I am Roman Torchwick, Your Grace. I heard stories of what you were capable of, and that these two were working for you. So, I thought I'd rough them up for you and come along. Nice place you got here, by the way. Loving the purples."

"You have a lot of nerve, Mr. Torchwick."

"Please, Mr. Torchwick was my asshole of a Father - Roman will do."

"I see. Tell me Roman, why did you come here?"

"Simple really, I don't like losing. And you are the winning side. Plus, you've got someone who knows Neo more than anyone. Who knows her weaknesses and fears; despite how much I hated being around her, I noticed things. Unlike some..."

"If that is the case, you have one chance to prove yourself."

"Very well" he grinned, tipping his hat to the woman and walking off.

 **~000~**

Seeing Neopolitan laying on the ground in front of her made her laugh. And not a nice laugh either, it was near enough a cackle. But a cackle from such a soft spoken voice - it made it all the more unnerving for Emerald and Cinder, who at this point were being restrained on one of the walls of the room.

"Do you see now you two?" Salem questioned, neither wanting or needing an answer, " _This_ is all it took. One simple human. Not any fancy tricks, no powers, just brains - something you two clearly lack nowadays." She reached out and took a glass from one of the small tables as she approached the pair. "You two aren't needed anymore, but it's such a shame to waste entertainingly stupid things run around. So I have decided that you won't be dying here today." The dark Goddess heard their sighs of relief. They didn't last long as she grabbed Cinder by the throat with her free hand. "That doesn't mean you're leaving unharmed."

Only one person knew what was happening, and that person was Salem. Everyone else watched as the woman used some sort of magic to pulled the Maiden's power out from Cinder's body via her mouth, the glowing fiery orb burning in her hand.

"What did you do to me?" Cinder begged, feeling empty having had the Maiden's powers inside her so long that they almost became part of her. With a flex of her pale wrist, the fiery orb turned into a full-on ball of flame in Salem's hand as she stepped closer to Cinder again.

"You use that voice of yours to crawl your way under the skins of many men and women, persuading them to join your lost cause." Using a single finger from the hand that held the glass, Salem pulled Cinder's jaw down, leaving her mouth agape. "Never again." She moved the hand with the flame above her mouth, then dropped the flame in. The pain literally burned her mouth, scorching every taste bud in there like a personal vendetta against them all. That's when it started falling, descending down her throat and burning away her vocal chords. Tears streamed down her face and the cries of pain grew more and more hoarse as less remained unsinged. The tattooed woman tried swallowing to rid herself of the pain faster, and she was thankful that she did. Words still felt like they could be formed, but they were going to hurt like a bitch.

"You've done enough, now let us go!" Emerald demanded, her eyes red from crying once more. It seemed like a common occurrence whenever she was here now.

"Not yet" she hummed. The locket around Salem's neck materialised from the glass of black liquid she had beside her. Honestly, Emerald thought that she was drinking wine, it wouldn't have shocked her to know that wine was this woman's drink of choice. But seeing how it turned out to be nothing more than the black goo dotted around the place the ashen skinned woman called 'home', she equally wasn't surprised. It snaked her way from her finger that she dipped into the pool up and along her arm, then formed into a small metal amulet as it got there. "You, whilst pathetic, have something very important for me."

"What else do I have to give you?" The woman tapped a finger on her chin and taunted her with waiting.

"I don't know, let me _see._ " The stressing on that last word, along with the evil smirk, gave Emerald all of one second to realise what she meant before a hand reached out and effortlessly plucked an eyeball straight from its socket. Her screams were the stuff of nightmares. Salem just wiped the blood and nerves off the eye and placed it in her new amulet, the red iris now glowing separated from its owner. The woman turned to Roman. "Well Roman, it seems you have yourself a seat at my table. Dispose of these fools, but don't get them killed by Grimm. I want to know they suffered for a long time before that moment."

"With pleasure."

* * *

There was no need for her to feel pity for the two of them. He did in one what they failed in five, in much less time as well.

Their punishments were just.

Salem smirked at the memories. She never enjoyed dwelling on the past, but in down moments like these, it was always fun to remember those that she hurt like that.

* * *

Emerald glanced back to Cinder with her one good eye and spotted the woman had fallen asleep in the chair she was sat in. She huffed gently and shook her head, smiling a pained smile.

' _How could someone so driven be so exhausted all of a sudden?_ ' she thought to herself. ' _It's so sad, and she'll dig herself into a pit of despair if we don't try and do something for ourselves._ ' Twenty minutes was all she was going to give Cinder. The woman only lost her voice, she had lost an eye. If anything, Emerald felt that she should be the one perpetually exhausted - which she was, but she never showed it. For once, in the partnership that she and Cinder had made in their time working together, _she_ was the one calling the shots. But it was for their own good.

A red eye stared out of the window once more and caught a glance of the back of Neo as she rounded a corner out of her sight.

' _I finally understand how you feel Neo. I wish you luck._ ' She spoke out loud; whether it was speaking directly to Neo or a way of convincing herself she was unsure, but she spoke with conviction nonetheless. "I hope you find happiness again."

* * *

I know that was a long way away from what you may have expected for a chapter, but I have a plan - however brief it may be, let's say 12% - to have them come back into the story one more time in the future, so world building was necessary.

And also, double celebrations! Last week was **Senseless'** One Year Anniversary, but this week we celebrate the fact that **Senseless** is now 50% complete. I've finished writing out the story, and it's currently sitting on my computer waiting to be looked through and each chapter uploaded when necessary. Unless something terrible happens in my life that forces my hand otherwise, the uploading schedule won't change, and so you can expect the story to continue right the way through until sometime in late June/early July _2019._

And don't forget, I've still got my other works, such as **Kenjutsu** that I'm working on alongside **DioRezi** , so my uploads won't stop just because this story has. We'll have Volume 6 by then, and hopefully more things RWBY, so there'll be plenty of inspiration.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated.


	56. Bringing the Student Body to Silence

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Coco woke from her sleep to see Velvet missing from their shared bed in the dorm and Fox also missing from his. When they had first started Beacon, she may have been worried about that, panicking ever so slightly that Fox may be trying to woo Velvet before she had a chance. Both of them assured her that she was thinking crazy and that nothing like that would happen between them. She believed them then, and she would believe them now.

Her first instinct upon waking up was to drag herself to the Common Room and get herself a Morning Coffee - nothing fancy like whipped cream or sauce or anything, just a cup, coffee granules, hot water and two spoons of sugar. Boiling the kettle took a few minutes, so she was left thinking to herself.

' _What are we going to do when Neo arrives? 'cause, she's going to. And soon._ ' The kettle whistling brought her back to reality but the thoughts still clouded her mind even as she made her way back with slightly more energy and enthusiasm than she did on the way there. To her surprise, Velvet and Fox had made their way back into the dorm whilst she was grabbing her drink, and Yatsuhashi was awake now as well. They greeted each other as they always did in the morning, but everyone could tell that the others were nervous about the day ahead. As Huntsmen and Huntresses near the end of their training, they were aware of what the dangers of life as Huntsmen outside the protective bubble that was Beacon would be like; that they'd thought about countless times before. But this was a new kind of nervous. They were nervous about when she'd attack, where she'd attack from, what they would have to do to stop her. Sure, they had Plans A through to G that would work well on paper, but 'on paper' is a hell of a difference to 'in real life'. So many factors can change, and this is what worried them most.

Neo was a teammate and a friend to all of them, essentially a sister to most and a lover to the one who she wasn't. And the thought of having to kill her just to keep her from killing them cast a dark shadow over the Fourth Year team.

Their morning routine continued as per normal; they got ready and made their way to the dining hall as a team and got their respective breakfasts. What was new this time around was the constant bombardment of First Years running up and wanting either photos or autographs of the great Team CFVYN. After the first three, it got too much and Velvet found herself latching onto Coco's side for comfort. She may have grown a lot since she was in their position 3 years ago, but that still didn't mean she had conquered all her fears. Large swarming crowds was one of them. And the added fear of Neo jumping out of it and attacking them amplified the anxiety.

"Right, pipsqueaks. Shift it!" It was clear the fashionista was on a very short leash today. "We just want to eat in peace for now, we _may_ let you do the whole 'paparazzi' thing another time, but for now, scram!" They complied, some of them rubbing the fact they got one of their signatures already or that they have a selfie with the team into the unfortunate one's faces. The gentle giant sighed almost disappointedly at their behaviour and seated himself next to Nora, whose bubbly personality shone through the doom and gloom of their morning.

"Good morning~" she sang. She literally sang it. Fox was honestly surprised to hear her voice, he always thought Nora was a 'scream until ears start bleeding' kind of singer. "How are you doing?" she asked, much more down to Remnant than she usually was. The tone shifts with her were unnerving.

"We are all a bit worried about the day ahead of us," Yatsuhashi replied, his deep voice showing a slight twinge of fear. "We don't know when Neo is going to strike, nor where, but we are fairly certain it will be today."

"Well," came Jaune's reply, "no matter what, we're in on this and we're going to help. You can count on us."

"Yeah! We're gonna be the best Super Team EVER!" came the very overhyped Ruby as she jumped onto the stool she was sitting on not a second prior, having devoured an entire plate of cookies for her so-called 'breakfast' and the initial sugar rush was already kicking in. Her hyperactivity was quickly calmed by her girlfriend-but-not-officially-really Weiss smacking her arm and forcing her down to sitting. Fox let out a little chuckle at the mass of red light bobbing up and down on the table opposite.

CFVY worked out a brief plan of the day with the two Third Year teams. They would have included HLQN in the discussion, but they were really more there to aid in defending CFVY against Neo rather than being a larger part of the plan - this was, of course, Ozpin's way of including the Second Years without really involving them too much. They agreed to those terms, so he was somewhat happy with them being part of this now. Knowing that Neo was most likely attack today at some point, they did their best to keep together as much as they could. Of JNPR's three lessons they had, one was with Professor Gale, so CFVY all mentioned how they would very much like to either be present in, or at the very least just outside of, that lesson - it _was_ in essentially a bunker two floors underground built to survive everything shy of the Apocalypse, and even then it'd take some time. That meant that there were three more lesson periods that day they needed to account for. Whilst JNPR had their free period, Team RWBY were in a lecture on Grimm Anatomy with Prof- _Doctor_ Oobleck. Velvet was on board with going there - even though the Final Year team all collectively agreed that Third Year Grimm Anatomy was by and large the single worst subject in their time here, that fact being received incredibly poorly by the seven 19 year olds and the one 17 year old sat with them - as she still firmly believed that Oobleck would be the best person to be around when Neo attacked.

"You're bringing that up again?" Fox asked. Nora, naturally, was curious and nosey about what they were talking about.

"Ooh, what're you talking about?"

"They were talking abo-"

" **NO!** "

There were very few things that could bring an entire dining hall of students to complete silence so fast. One would be their collective, untimely deaths. Second would be Glynda Goodwitch walking through the doors with any expression other than neutral and her arms folded. Third and finally, four Fourth Year students all collectively shouting at a Third Year to stop telling another student with a habit of making crazy things happen about a potential crazy idea that could wipe out the school.

This was a case where option three had occurred.

"Hun, they're all staring at us..." Velvet whispered, not breaking eye contact with a particular First Year student whose eyes were constantly flitting between her own eyes and her rabbit ears.

"I wondered why everything went quiet and still" Fox commented, seeing only unmoving blobs of colour around him.

"What do we do Coco?"

"Velvs, hunny, I can't think if you keep talking" she shot back in an effort be say it as quietly but firmly as she could. Brown eyes scouted for options. Brown eyes found no immediate solutions. They darted down by chance and found the solution, so she started edging her way slowly towards it. "D'you guys need to be in a lecture soon?"

"We sort of do, yeah. Why?" Pyrrha's emerald eyes glanced down and saw the fashionista slowly grabbing one of the small dishes in front of them that was covered in cream usually reserved for Nora's pancake topping when the syrup supply was depleted.

"Because I'm about to make most of Beacon late." The last sentence was spoken in a normal voice as the dish was pulled off the table and hurled towards a student about three tables across.

* * *

Sticking to the shadows and tree canopies where she could, Neo made her way towards the main building. She got on to Beacon grounds with ease, she remembered the exact ways she had done it back before she and Fox became a couple. The odd thing (for her, at least) was that getting inside of the building itself was easier than getting to said building. Her normal routine was to go to the dining hall and leave when other people left, then she was part of a crowd. Now, however, was not going to be one of those times.

She was crouching under the window when a soft * _thunk_ * came from above her. She glanced in to see what caused it, only to have her vision obscured by a thick blackberry-pie-innards mess on the window.

' _Food fight... there is no way I'm going to get in and get through to the main building with that going on._ ' In a brainwave, she smiled smugly as her eye colours swapped sides. ' _Maybe I don't need to get to the building. I just need to find them in this mess._ '

* * *

CFVY was gone long before the Food Fight they'd started really got going. Coco's dish of cream splatted someone clean in the face, who returned the attack in gusto but missed the gunner and instead hit Ren in the side of the head. Nora, being Nora, felt obligated to defend Ren's honour.

"You have disrespected my Renny, prepare to _die!_ " The scariest thing was that no one knew if she was kidding or not. It took exactly 2 minutes for the entirety of the dining hall - save Team CFVY, Weiss and Pyrrha - to be caught in the ensuing battle. That wasn't to say they escaped unscathed; Yatsuhashi got hit by a few stray items of food, what with him being so tall, and Fox was unaware of the pie heading straight for his face until it hit him. The six who fled did so to save themselves from the embarrassment that would follow, but also to finish finalising the plan for the day, and to clean up. The 20 minutes they spent planning uninterrupted was beneficial for them, but their nerves were promptly shattered when they received a message on their Scrolls from Ruby.

* * *

The fight was sensational. Nothing could top their First Year intimate food fight, but this was close. It was near enough all 3 full Years worth of students in the battle. The Third Years had had plenty of practice at food fights. They were all hauled up in the top half of the hall, with some infighting among them but nothing too bad. The new kids were down the other end, completely inexperienced and it was noticeable. They threw food everywhere, not caring who they aimed for. Stuck in the middle were the Second Years. They were focussing mostly on defending themselves due to the double flank they had against them, but they persisted and held their own for a commendable amount of time.

Once CFVY, Pyrrha and Weiss had left the hall the battle raged on for a good 20 minutes. In that time, Neo had snuck her way into the hall and was trying to find her target in the mix of all the battle. From the outside door she entered through, she had made it two-thirds of the way down the hall towards where the Third Years were defending from when the doors slammed open once again. There were three things that silence a hall of students so fast. One was their deaths, three was Fourth Year students shouting. Sadly, neither of those happened this time. Instead, was Option 2.

Professor Goodwitch still had a few steps to go after the doors flew open, so clearly she was used her semblance to do the work for her. Her riding crop raised and a large amount of the food currently in the air froze in its tracks. That was when the hall went deadly quiet. Quiet, save for a single sound of shattering glass. Everyone looked to the windows, Glynda included, but no one saw anything broken.

"Ms. Rose," the teacher called across the hall. The previously hidden head of the young team leader appeared from behind a table, tomato staining her left cheek. "It appears the stained glass has been broken. Make your friends aware of this." Then with a flick of her wrist the dining hall began magically remaking itself. Ruby heard the comment and hastily typed out her message to Team CFVY. Glynda had spoken in code, but Ruby translated it in the message.

 **R - 'Neo's here. She was in the dining hall'**

* * *

The mute silently cursed her sudden instincts. She saw Professor Goodwitch and immediately bailed via teleporting. That meant that she'd created an illusion that would have shattered and drawn attention to it.

' _Stupid move._ ' She ran away from there, sticking to the shadows once again. She needed to hide out somewhere that very few people would go, just to plan what her next move would be now that her element of surprise was all but ruined. She'd need to jump them and try to get Fox as fast as possible.

* * *

Velvet and Yatsuhashi joined Team JNPR in Professor Peach's class whilst Team RWBY were accompanied by the remaining 2 members of CFVY in Port's lecture. Fox was happy that this was where he was, Port was his go-to for the teacher who could (and would) win in a fight amongst the staff.

"Seriously Fox," Coco whispered in the top corner of the room, a good few metres away from everyone else so that they weren't distracting anyone and quietly enough to do the same, "what on Remnant do you see in this guy?"

"I told you before, it's the tactics. He's been around them for so long that he knows how they fight and how to beat that. Hell, he and Oobleck had bets back when they were younger." Her eyebrows arched at the news from the boy beside her. "Really Coco? Did you not pay any attention in his classes at all?" All he got was a shrug in return. With a grunt that may have been a tad too loud for the grey-haired tactician at the front, Fox explained. "Back when they were still Huntsmen they regularly went on mission and had friendly competitions on who could kill the most Grimm."

"Killing more Grimm doesn't equate to being a be-"

" _So_ , after countless missions where neither definitively proved that they were the better, they decided to settle their debate with a 1-vs-1 duel. It..." the room was quiet, and that's what worried him - this would be the second time today that the room he was in went deadly quiet. He turned to the front and saw Port's Aura; it was staring right at him. "Uh..."

"No, by all means Mr. Alistair, do continue. I do enjoy listening to others recount my tales of wonder."

"That's just it sir, I don't know how this one ended."

"I may be able to aid in that dilemma; which tale may you be referring to?"

"Your... battle against Doctor Oobleck." A nostalgic smile appeared under the moustache of the man in red at the front.

"Ah, our battle was glorious..." he sighed, reminiscing.

"so, what actually happened?"

"I shall spare you the details - I _do_ have a class I am teaching," he gestured out with a wide sweeping arm to the group in front of him, most of whom had lost interest a while ago, "but as a brief summation; it was fierce and raged on for ages. I held a tactical advantage against him-"

"AHA!"

"- _but_ he did hold a speed advantage."

"Aha yourself Fox!"

"Even so, there was a result at the end." Both of the Seniors leaned forward in anticipation. "The result was that Ozpin had clearly seen enough and broke up the battle before it could be ended." They both expressed their distain at the anti-climax that was the story. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have minds to blow with the time I once punched a Beringel to death." There was a faint "Ooh" that could be heard from Yang as she was suddenly interested by the idea of her Professor punching a giant Grimm Gorilla to death. "See?" he commented with a giant grin as he returned to his duties as a teacher. Fox was the first to speak again.

"I still think he would have won in the end."

"I'm sorry," the gunner said lowering her sunglasses to look directly into Fox's blank eyes, "but who was it that Port said stopped the battle?" The blind boy grumbled an inaudible response. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you Foxy boy?"

"I said 'It was Ozpin', alright?"

"Uh huh, now you know that he could stop both yours and Velvet's choices, that leaves myself and Neo in the running..." she realised the moment she said it that bringing her up was a bad idea. "Crap. Fox, I'm-"

"No, no, it's alright. We've got to do it and she's been a big part of our lives for the past 18 months; she won't just go away at the click of your fingers, and the memories we've shared won't either." Instinctively, he reached for his Scroll and went to his photo album. He couldn't see anything, but he'd memorised how to get there from the locked screen of the Scroll so he didn't need sight. "Would you mind Coco?" With a small smile, she took his Scroll and scrolled across to where he wanted. She passed more recent photos, a few more private photos were meant to be for their eyes only - if it weren't for the fact that Velvet had taken the photos and that Coco was there with them - and came to a stop by a small video. She turned the volume right down and placed it back in Fox's hands, then hit the screen to play it.

 _*Hey._ * It was his own voice. * _So I've come here with Neo - my tree. It's the first day of our final break before the summer and I wanted to do something with her that I think seems well overdue. It's something simple, and we both know the answer, but I wanted video proof of it happening. So; Neopolitan, would you be my girlfriend?_ * There was no sound besides the running water and the faint blow of the wind for a few seconds, then he heard the smacking of the lips as he remembered that was the answer she had given him for the camera. * _She said yes._ * With a giggle, he shuffled back to the camera and turned it off.

"She's not gone. I think there's hope left. We can save her," he whispered to him leader, tears falling from his blank eyes.

* * *

' _Smart,_ ' she thought to herself, seeing the group walking together, ' _staying in a group will keep them safe. Probably Ozpin's idea._ ' The group did have that aspect down to a T. But they made one small error; if you're going to do that, don't leave the crowd. Fox, Coco and Team RWBY all opted to walk across the courtyard to get to their lesson rather than take the longer but safer route of round the outside.

This was her chance.

The five young women and Fox were chatting amongst themselves when they heard a faint shattering sound off to one side. Before they had a chance to react, Fox felt a kick land straight to his gut and send him flying halfway across the courtyard. Ruby disappeared in a flurry of rose petals to catch him before he careened into a wall as Yang let out a snarl and swung to strike the attacker, but the punch was redirected; the momentum the brawler had behind the punch was used to force her over the attacker's shoulder and thrown 5 metres away and onto the cobbled floor. Ruby caught up to Fox, but at his speed he still continued on and all Ruby did was put a nice, 17 year old cushion between himself and the wall.

"Oof!"

"You alright back there?" There was nothing more than an exhale of air and a pained sigh, signifying that she was at least a little okay - winded at best. Fox glanced up and saw that light in the distance of his vision. He saw Neo's Aura dancing ahead of him, taunting him. Over the distance, he could make out her evil smirk as her eyes undoubtedly swapped colours.

* * *

As I had mentioned before, **Senseless** has been written in its entirety, and admittedly has been for a while now. But the main thing about _this_ chapter was that it was written whilst _Avengers: Infinity War_ was still in the midst of filming. So,

 **{~ SPOILERS FOR THE END OF 'AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR' ~}**

having _that moment_ at the end linking slightly to what was said in my story - "...she won't just go away at the click of your fingers..." - was actually incredibly funny for me, despite it being my own story. I think it was just ironic how I wrote that in there not knowing how the movie was going to wrap up in the third act.

Penultimate chapter in this Arc of the story, next chapter rounding off this whole thing with a nice big fight.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	57. Brawl in the Courtyard

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Jaune was thankful that Professor Peach's class was nearly over; she wasn't bad, but she wasn't particularly interesting either. It just meant her lessons dragged on for so long. And what made it worse was the fact she always ran late by 20 minutes. So here he and his team were, sitting in a class that was meant to finish 5 minutes ago waiting for her to realise that she had overrun. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel when the message came through from Weiss.

 **W - 'Courtyard. NOW!'**

Despite the uncertainty on his feelings, Jaune didn't need to be told twice; he jumped up and ran straight for the door.

"Oh, Mr. Arc. Why are you leaving so soon?" the voice of the teacher came.

"Our freezer is broken, and we need to save our sorbet!" On that, he continued running and headed straight to where he needed to go. VY and NPR recognised the code and sprung to action as well. Velvet and Yatsuhashi were by the door anyway, so they were gone shortly after Jaune was. Pyrrha and Ren ran down from where they sat as well. Nora, being Nora, stood on the desk and leapt from it to the doorway on the other side of the classroom some 15 metres away.

"Ms. Valkyrie, wha-"

"I'm gonna go _conduct_ an experiment!" she practically screamed with joy as she left the room, her slower but safer descending teammates leaving the classroom seconds after she had departed. Whilst she was told she needed to say that, the enthusiasm behind it was entirely her own.

All the strawberry blonde teacher could think of as a suitable reply was a mere "Oh."

* * *

At this point, Neo was taunting them all. How couldn't she be, with that smug look and a posture that was very obviously open and practically screaming 'Hit me'? She was wearing her normal attire - white jacket, brown trousers and corset, gloves and white high heeled boots - but the unmistakable splatters of red couldn't be hidden from their sights, especially against the vanilla colours of her jacket and boots. She didn't need that anymore anyway, she was more in her comfort zone like this anyway.

"Neo, what are you doing?" Coco queried, trying her best to reason with her teammate and friend. "We're your partners, friends, teammates; why are you fighting us? What have we done?" The woman simple flung her parasol back over her shoulder and mockingly yawned, sparking something inside the blonde brawler.

 _Rage._

Her Mate felt the emotion coursing through her and reached out to place a hand on her shoulder. "Yang, don't! She wants that, and you are fully aware of that fact." Sadly, for the Faunus, the response wasn't what she wanted to hear.

"I've been fine with her for 18 months, Blake. I've forgiven her for what she was and did." The buxom blonde started walking forward, a faint glow radiating from her hair. "But this isn't her. This isn't the woman I forgave; it's the woman I've been wanting a rematch with." Weiss and Coco lowered themselves, ready for a fight. Weiss didn't have her rapier, but she could now produce glyphs without it being there, so she could hold her own until she got the chance to summon her weapon in her locker. Coco didn't have that problem; her weapon was always on her side when it needed to be. Seeing no other option, Blake jumped between Yang and her target, both of whom seemed disappointed at the action taken. "Blake, move out of-"

"No Yang! You need to stop!" Amber eyes began tearing up, and the sight started levelling the blonde and calming her crimson eyes back down to their natural lilac hue. "You need to stay grounded, for all of our sakes." Her pleas turned quieter as she recalled the enemy standing behind her. "We can't lose her and ruin the plan by you not being in the right frame of mind." That comment completely sobered Yang from her rage high as she blinked the last of it away and steadied her breathing, the glow fading.

"You're right" she admitted.

"I know I am." The small grins that grew on both of their faces was their way of showing that they were okay now, if the emotions coming from their glowing Mate's Marks weren't enough of an indicator of that anyway.

Ruby wheezed as Fox clumsily helped her stand again. "Are you sure you're okay, Ruby? I would have hit the wall pretty hard, and you took basically all of that impact."

"I'm fine, honestly," she puffed, struggling to stand slightly after all the wind was knocked out of her, "I've been on the receiving end of many a 'Xiao Long 2-Early 2-Rise Punch' - trademarked - that was nothing." She tried her best to put on a brave face, but a sudden wave of pain hit her, shooting up her left arm. "Why do I do things?" she muttered, re-relocating her shoulder.

"Look, we've just got to keep Neo occupied until everyone arrives. Once that's done we can- _argh!_ " He was cut off by a blade slicing his arm, nothing too deep or life-threatening but enough to let him know that it was there. Neo had teleported again, closed the gap and was beginning her attack on the blind boy. As the three girls facing off against her turned to see where she now stood, Weiss uttered a curse and started forming glyphs, one behind Yang for her to leap off of and another between the killer ice cream girl and her boyfriend. Coco ran in as Yang flew across the gap with Weiss' aid and Blake pulled out her Scroll to summon her locker to her.

They weren't going to attack first, that wasn't part of the plan. Now that she had attacked them, they had every right to attack back.

Part of the plan discussed how they would attempt to get their weapons in. Neo wouldn't sit around patiently for them to gather their weapons, they needed to do it on the fly. As Fox was most likely Target Number 1, it was agreed that whichever member of Team CFVY he was with should have their weapons on them, but as a team they agreed that all of them ought to have their weapons on them at all times for safety. Also, as Yang was the only hand-to-hand student in the large group besides Fox, she would get her weapons last - it meant that there'd be at least someone who could immediately rush Neo when the time came. To be useful in the battle, Jaune needed his weapons ASAP, so he'd get his first. Then it was to be Ren; his weapons meant there was lots of bullets hitting the ground in quick succession and would thus be more difficult to avoid. Ruby next, as she was very weak without her weapon - though she was improving - and it gave them a larger range advantage. They needed Nora as an essential part of the plan, so her hammer would be the next weapon called.

Blake could do very well with using her Shadow Clones to dodge, but equally she was just as strong on the offense as well. After her, there were only Weiss and Pyrrha left before Yang bringing up the rear. Pyrrha was a 4-time Champion, so you'd think getting her in play would have been essential; this was not the case. Weiss' glyphs could actively turn the tide of the battle, but without Myrtenaster she was limited to a handful of basic glyphs, so she was to get her weapon next. Besides, Pyrrha could use her semblance from afar and shift Neo's attacks away, and that was something that she could do with or without her spear and shield.

Whoever was there at the time would work through that list in order to maximise their chances. However, though Ruby wasn't exactly incapacitated, she _was_ directly in Neo's firing line, so when she was gone from there she could summon her weapon to her. Seeing that, Blake took the initiative and called her locker first.

As Blake was typing in her numbers to her Scroll, Yang had already closed the gap and was within swinging distance of Neo, who herself was trying to overpower the Schnee's protective glyph. The first punch was dodged without the petite woman even turning around to see the attack, so understandably Yang got a little riled up at that. When the second came, Neo pivoted around Yang's front foot and pushed her down onto the glyph as if it was a solid surface, which technically it was. Yang didn't have much time to register the impact as suddenly she was having to catch the end of Neo's hidden blade, which had since been removed from her parasol and was now attempting to be plunged straight into the buxom blonde's chest.

"Neo, that's enough!" Coco shouted, announcing her presence to the mute. A rookie mistake for the renowned leader to make. Coco swung her handbag at Neo, who effortlessly ducked under it and delivered a fast kick to the beret wearer's chest, flinging her backwards. The interaction was so fast that Yang barely had time to register that Neo had relented her attack on her, only realising when the blade came back down towards her, closer than it had been before and now aiming for right between her eyes. Not only did Yang not notice something, but the mute failed to take in her surroundings either. After a couple of seconds, a black ribbon wrapped itself around the left boot of the assailant. The petite woman looked down just in time to notice it as it was yanked hard, pulling her backwards away from the Cat Faunus' partner and Mate. Ruby took the opportunity too, grabbing Fox and dashing off to one side to hide him behind a wall.

"Ruby, I can fight her. We need everyone we can get there fighting her."

"Exactly!" the reaper replied, grabbing her Scroll and summoning her own locker to the battlefield. "We need _everyone_ here. Once we have at least Nora fighting her, then you can re-join the fight. Until then, both you and Neo are at risk, especially if those things on her wrists are what you said they were."

"I know what happened and I _know_ they are." He snapped back, but then sighed - albeit reluctantly - and relaxed further, slumping down behind the small wall. "I'll stay put" he relented.

"I'm sorry Fox, I know you wanna get back out there and fight for your girlfriend, but it's not safe for either of you. You can stay here and use your semblance to see us or something..." she trailed off, knowing that he most likely wasn't listening anymore. With a pat on his shoulder and a lacklustre "Good luck", Ruby snuck round the outside of the wall to remain hidden, then she leapt over when she was far enough away from Fox to make it seem like she had kept him there, making a beeline straight for her locker where Crescent Rose lay waiting. Fox did as the enthusiastic leader suggested and let his semblance expand out to see everyone around him. He couldn't make out the entire fight, but he could tell where Neo was. She was on the defensive, but that didn't mean she wasn't in control. He thought he'd make himself useful and message Team HLQN to get them here, but he only remembered after the thought had crossed his mind that in order to do that he'd need sight, which he didn't have.

"Stupid blindness, now I remember why I was so lonely for so long..." he muttered to himself under his breath, not giving Neo any chances of finding him.

Over the other side of the wall, Neo was still dodging everyone with laughable ease. If the brawler's concentration / effort face was anything to go by, they were trying their hardest to land a hit whilst she barely did anything. Sure, the bookworm caught her leg and pulled her to the ground, but no one capitalised. Coco was the best bet for Neo to focus on offensively; it would have been the brawler, but she learnt from her year and a bit at Beacon that her semblance allowed her to bounce back any hits she took with twice the ferocity, so hitting her would need to be reserved for dire situations. Blake's tendency to dodge and remain just outside of melee range, the Heiress' use of glyphs and Ruby's phenomenal speed, even without her semblance, made them more difficult targets and left her open more times than she'd want. So that left Coco, who openly admitted to Neo on multiple occasions that she was the weakest out of the entire team when it came to fighting in close quarters, despite all the training she put in. Sadly for her, Neo's bread and butter was fighting close and personal.

The gunner went for another swing, but the sturdy parasol deflected the attack wide and left her body wide open for an attack. The side of her weapon cracked into the ribs of the fashionista, then with a spin she went for a rising shot to the jaw, one that Coco managed to avoid with nanoseconds to spare. But the dodge left her balance ever so slightly off, so still in the same motion the mute did a second spin and landed an Aura-infused palm strike straight to the gut. Her Aura wavered and buckled under the attack - it was the type that, when done as it had just been, was meant to topple Grimm in a strike and destroy them nigh instantaneously - but she held up just enough as she flew backwards. The strike didn't channel enough Aura to make it deadly - which confused the beret wearer - but that didn't stop her from feeling violently unwell the second she landed. Neo dodged a flying fist from Yang then jumped towards Coco to finish the deal. Her heel, which was aiming straight for where the sunglass toting head of Coco would have been, came into contact with a glyph instead.

' _Stupid Schnee_ ' she thought to herself as she instead sprung off it, gracefully flipped in the air and landed on a small grassy area in the middle of the courtyard facing them all. A small smile formed on the face of the blind boy off to the side.

With a hushed breath, Fox uttered to himself "Nice one Weiss." Neo obviously forgot that they shared each other's thoughts, hence why he was always speaking to himself out rather than in his own head, lest Neo hear those thoughts.

"What's the plan Coco?" the blonde asked, rolling her shoulders once and readying herself in a fighting stance once more.

"Weiss, call your sword in now -"

"Right"

"- Yang, keep on the attack, then call in your gauntlets once Weiss has her weapon -"

"Gotcha Coco!"

"- Ruby; you, me and Blake need to keep her busy throughout. Got it?"

"Let's go" Blake confirmed with a nod, her and Yang pushing off and flying at the pint-sized killer with impeccable symmetry.

"Just be careful Coco," Ruby mentioned before she sped off to join the fray, "she seems to be going after you since she can't find Fox."

"Noted."

* * *

Team HLQN were making their way to the library with aching bones and depleted Auras. They'd deserved this relaxation. Having just finished a combat class with Professor Goodwitch, everything stung to some degree, a free period in the library sound just perfect right about now.

"I'm telling you," Quentin ensured, their discussion having started long before and now rising to a definitive peak, "there is a lot more to it than that."

"Lulu back me up on this one."

"Nylan's right Quen; it really is that simple. You're just looking into it far too much." The male of the group tried for another counter argument, but found himself merely sighing and admitting defeat. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Could you _not_ right now?" he snapped. The Persimmon smirked at the fight in her teammate.

"Why, something cropped up that means you need to run away from your partner?" Almost as if it was on cue, gunshots could be heard from the courtyard not too far away, followed by a single explosion. He shot her a smug smile.

"It was as if I'd planned that." Carrying the smirk on, he skipped backwards once before pivoting and breaking into a run out to the sound, his teammates following swiftly after him as other people in the library started moaning at the fact that there were "so many explosions". One person from RWBY's year explained that "there were more explosions by this point when they first started" like this was a contest of measuring di-

* * *

Once Yang had her precious Ember Celica locked onto her wrists, she was the first to fire any shots at Neo. Each glowing red orb sailed past her with minimum effort coming from the dodger's part. To close the gap as fast as she could without teleporting the short distance and using any Aura (which when she had a quick check was sitting at around 65%), she grabbed a Fire Dust Crystal and chucked it at the ground by her feet, jumping as she did so. The resulting explosion - the same on Team HLQN heard - shot the mute high up into the sky; so high in fact that anyone who were to try and spot her would only be met by the blinding light of the Sun on their retinas. This provided great cover for Neo, the perfect strategy.

That was until her team leader started filling the sky with Lead.

' _Sunglasses... why do I keep forgetting the simple things?_ ' she chastised herself, leaving the only option left of teleporting away. She was high enough for the sound of her disappearing to be completely muffled by the whirring of Gatling barrels and the equally noisy explosions from the end of said barrels, but that still wouldn't stop the shards of her former position cascading onto the opponents below.

"She's gone," came the cry from the older team leader, "outward face in the centre, keep your eyes peeled!" The four Third Years obey as if she were their own leader, though to be fair if Coco Adel was ordering you to do something for her you wouldn't say no - not unless you wanted a sturdy boot up your ass. All five girls went back to back, their weapons were reloaded so that they didn't have to deal with doing that mid battle and their faces were determined to catch Neo no matter the cost.

Neo was perched in the tree on the edge of the courtyard, just out of eyeshot of everyone on the ground. The high ground gave her time to rethink her strategy. Well, more like think _of_ a strategy - she was just doing what she was told to do; kill Fox.

' _Alright, first thing's first: where's Fox?_ ' She moved about in the tree, sneaking along one of the larger and sturdier branches to get a better view of the courtyard; even though it put her at an elevated risk of being seen it was one she had to take. She slipped once on a slightly slippery part of the branch, but no one seemed to notice. It was hard enough for her to search out the place from the treetop as is, adding in the fact she had five enemies below her, her target was hiding well out of sight _and_ her target could hear her thoughts, although that last bit of information had escaped the mind of the tri coloured killer at this moment in time.

Knowing her motives at the moment was one thing, knowing where Neo was introduced a new level of complication. She'd hidden her Aura, now that she was focussing on stealth and so Fox could only sense her Aura when she was right on top of him... figuratively, of course.

' _Stupid leaves_ ' was the answer he was looking for - she was hiding in a tree, more specifically the tree in the courtyard. He knew that not only from the leaf comment, but also the fact that if he was her target, why would she leave? Staying close means that he would always be on edge, like predator and prey. He glanced down at his uniform, the cut Neo gave him from earlier still bleeding but less so than before, staining the white shirt they wore as uniform. It would have been a fair assumption to say that Fox was annoyed at not only the fresh cut on his arm - deliberately given to him by his _girlfriend_ of all people - but at the fact that the stain wouldn't come out and he'd have a permanent slash in his shirt and blazer. He ignored the small throbbing pain in his arm and focussed on his mission - get Neo back.

The five girls all stood in the circle, eyes darting everywhere in hopes of catching a glimpse of Neo. What Weiss didn't expect to see was Fox rising up from his hiding spot and starting to walk over towards them and the tree in the courtyard.

"What are you doing?!" she called, gaining the attention of the other four in the defensive circle and the silent killer in the tree.

"I'm going to try and talk some sense into my girlfriend" was the brief but to the point reply. ' _I know where you are Neo. Come down from up there._ ' The five girls were all chastising him for his actions but he had completely blocked it out, only hearing the faint and muffled sounds of them trying to talk to him. Those sounds stopped immediately when Neo actually complied and jumped from the tree, their stances dropping and facing her now, but Fox kept walking. ' _You forgot we could talk like this, didn't you?_ '

' _Don't._ '

"I'm sorry?" he spoke, halting in his tracks at the word.

' _I don't want to do this. I really don't. But with these things on my wrists,_ ' he held her arms out to emphasise her point, ' _I can't do anything else without them try-_ ' the high pitched noise started. ' _No, no! I'll fight! I'm going to fight!_ ' The panic grew on the woman's face, something no one predicted would happen, her eyes shifting to a ghostly and frightened vanilla white. Blake cringed slightly at the intensity of the noise, her hearing amplifying the squeal. ' _Don't do-_ ' No one could have prepared for how violent the next few seconds would be.

Just as Fox had described, there was suddenly massive bolts of lightning coming from the bracelets on Neo's wrists. Her face contorted in pain, begging to be screaming but the DAG Syndrome claimed that ability a long time ago. The electric blue of bolts illuminated the surrounding area almost to the point where everywhere was being darkened by the sheer brightness of it all, fazing everyone there but Fox for obvious reasons. However when the bolts started arching larger and further from her body, then there was a mad rush to get Fox away from it all. Coco ran in first being as she already had sunglasses on, with Yang grabbing hers from a hidden pocket in her blazer and running in too, and forcefully grabbed him and threw him out of harm's way. Team HLQN noticed this and started running harder and faster through the crowds that were gathering nearby, and JNPR, Yatsuhashi and Velvet saw the sparks flying as well; the hammer wielder's turquoise eyes bulging in fear.

"I wasn't fast enough!" she cried over and over, seeing it as a defeat. It took the combined efforts of Ren, Yatsuhashi, Pyrrha and Jaune to get her up and moving again.

Meanwhile, the lightshow that was Neo had finally stopped. The woman staggered twice, then collapsed to her knees, shaking uncontrollably and her breaths short and painful. After a couple of agonisingly quiet seconds, Neo felt a prick and the Aura Suppressor and Replenisher flooded into her veins. She felt alive again, felt ready for another fight, and her mind was telling her that there was nothing else she should be doing other than killing Fox Alistair.

Fox went to go look back at Neo, but in the time it took for him to look up she was halfway across the distance and was ready to kill. As the unsheathed hidden parasol blade came down, Ruby had sped across the gap between where she was and where she is and caught it inches from Fox's face.

"Yang, call JNPR! Get them here now!"

"On it Rubes!" The reaper pushed the mute back and started swinging her scythe around to catch her. Even though it was massive in size and weight, the 17 year old twirled it around like it was nothing, although the ice cream girl did notice a few slight grimaces of pain whenever she tried to swing with her left arm. Neo exercised her theory, keeping far enough away to irritate the girl into swinging the oversized garden tool with increasingly wilder disregard but not too far that she'd resort to shooting at her. Ruby aimed for her head and Neo ducked under it. She aimed for her legs and the attack was jumped over. Time after time the swings kept missing and the pain grew on Ruby's face. Eventually, the crafty ex-mercenary seized the opportunity and, after a particularly wild swing from the cloaked girl, Neo dashed in and struck hard on the girl's left shoulder - harder than she actually intended - causing a loud and very recognisable crunch and pop sound as her shoulder was forcefully dislocated by the woman. As Neo's eyes blinked to a ghostly white, Ruby's scream of agony could have been heard all the way in Vale it seemed that loud. Yang most definitely heard; her hair erupted in a golden flame and her eyes glowed red in an instant - she was prepared to risk everything to stop this woman from killing her baby sister. She felt the roar of rage rising rapidly through her body so fast that it started flowing into her Mate as well, Blake's eyes almost glowing as well as they both prepared to charge Neo.

But before anyone else could react, a persimmon coloured beam of energy shot Neo in the side and sent her flying away from the crippled leader. Lulu stood there, her arm dropping after the shot was fired and Nylan raced in, skidding to a halt in front of Ruby, with Weiss joining them there.

"Ruby, are you alright? Please be alright." Weiss almost begged that her partner be alright, it was so unlike her. Even in the 2 years they'd know each other Weiss had never really cried like she was now. There were no restrictions, no barriers, no walls of ice to stop the emotions flowing. "I can't lose you Ruby, I-"

"Weiss..." Ruby managed through gritted teeth, "not dead... just in pain..." Whilst her cheeks flushed in embarrassment, she sighed in relief.

"You dolt... hold still, move your other hand unless you want it stuck there." Ruby did as she was told, and Weiss pointed her rapier at Ruby's shoulder. She took her left hand in her right, as she spun the Dust cylinders to land on Ice. "Ready?" With a teary nod, Weiss pushed the shoulder back into place and then shot it with Ice Dust, encasing the joint in a block of ice. Even though the bitter cold helped, it still didn't completely rid her of the pain as she screamed once again. "Ruby, relax. I've got you." The Heiress hauled her partner up and walked her away from the fight.

As this was happening, Neo steadied herself and stood after the blast, her jacket now charred on one side after Lulu's blast.

' _At least she'll be exhausted now_ ' Neo thought to herself as she clutched her burning side and turned to face the girl who caused the pain, ' _and an exhausted target is an easier target._ '

"Lulu, watch yourself, she's going after you."

' _Shit!_ ' She shot Fox a look, who smugly grinned at her; she couldn't think of any strategies with him nearby, he'd only broadcast them to everyone else. Everything needed to be an on the fly decision. He thought he was being clever, calling out her thoughts for everyone to hear, but in reality, doing this just made their job a whole lot trickier. Heterochromia glanced over at the retreating White and Red pair; they would be the easiest to deal with, but she had much more pressing problems on her hands - like the glowing older sister and her partner who both looked like they were ready to beat her into the dirt for hurting Ruby. Her eyes darted around the area trying to find her mark. ' _Where is she?_ '

"Where is who, Neo? Where's your back-up? She's not coming, and even if she was we've got our own back-up coming in soon as well."

"Team JNPR's coming along with Yatsuhashi and Velvet, they said they'd be here in three," Yang growled, "which means I've got plenty of time to hurt you after what you did to my sister!"

' _3 minutes, that's all I've got to do..._ ' At this point, she didn't care that Fox could hear her thoughts, she'd gone from a 5-vs-1 fight against her to a 7-vs-1 fight against her, winning this battle really _was_ hopeless.

"Face it, you're outnumbered and outgunned Neo. Why don't you give yourself up now?"

' _I can't... not yet..._ '

"What do you mean 'Not yet'?" Everyone straightened up in confusion.

' _If I stop fighting you or if I fail, I die. I can't stop yet!_ ' With that, she burst forward at a staggering speed towards Fox, the Aura Replenisher having done its job and revitalised her completely. Everyone was stunned by the burst of speed that no one had the chance to dash forward and stop her. Well, no one except Nylan, who was the only one there fast enough to stop her even if they'd all noticed. Her sword clashed with Neo's blade, sending sparks flying as metal collided with metal. Neo was relentless with her attacks. She very rarely went all out in a fight, so seeing her like this was... scary, really.

' _This isn't what I want Fox._ ' She swung hard at Nylan, knocking the sword lose from her grip. ' _Trust me, it isn't even close._ ' With a quick headbutt, she dazed the Second Year Faunus, yet before she could deliver a more substantial blow three bullets flew past her as Quentin was firing his weapon at her; a three burst shot assault rifle. ' _But I don't want to die._ ' Quentin kept firing, but Neo kept dodging, getting ever closer to him. With three final shots he swapped it to its melee form of a large battle axe and attacked where Neo was. The blade almost embedded itself into the cobblestone on that attack, but the boy fired a shot at the last second to send the sharp end shooting backwards to catch the assailant with a sneak attack. Unfortunately, she was prepared for that and cartwheeled over the strike.

' _I've got promises I've not kept,_ ' she exchanged a few blows with Quentin and started gaining the upper hand on him, that was until Viola joined in the fight, her hammer and his battle axe larger than her own weapons and much harder hitting, but slower, ' _I still have questions to ask, and answers to find,_ ' the patterned pair attempted a joint strike on Neo - Quentin going high and Viola low - and Neo let the attacks hit her, for the second they did the Neo that stood there was nothing more than shattered remains as the real Neo appeared above Lulu, a swift kick connecting with her head before landing and shooting off to battle her own team leader ' _I still have a full life to live!_ '

Neo toyed with Coco, it was fun but it also stretched out the time a bit more. The mute wore a frustrated smirk as she danced around her leader, peppering her with the occasional smack of the sheathed weapon, ending with a low strike from the handle end that tripped her up. From there, she jumped with a graceful front flip to where Blake stood. ' _If I die now, there's no way of telling if your sight will remain gone._ ' Neo wound up aiming a heavy strike to the Faunus' head, but the strike was interrupted by one from Yang cracking her right across the jaw and sent her spiralling, the heavy brawler having been surprisingly quiet on approach.

"I think there's some payback due for that time on the train, Neo" Yang spat at the ice cream girl, blood from where she bit the inside of her cheek after the shotgun aided punch connected pooling in her mouth. Neo glanced up briefly to see the Partners working together to attack her. As they moved around her, Yang fired off a single round from her left gauntlet in front of Neo and one from her right at her as Blake shot rounds behind her. They were baiting her. If she rolled forwards or stayed still, she'd be hit by Yang's rounds. Backwards and there'd be Blake's bullets waiting. Either side meant she'd need to deal with one of them. She chose Option 6 - teleport.

' _I want you to see me again, so I need you to focus on fighting me_.'

"Neo, I don't understand."

' _And that's my point._ ' As parasol collided with fist and katana over and over again, Neo heard a call from off to one side of the courtyard and saw 6 students running towards her. JNPR, Velvet and Yatsuhashi were here. She grinned, then set her plan into motion. With a slight shift in her posture, she forced Yang completely off balance and sent her flying into Blake. From there, she teleported once more to Fox and wrapped her arms around him, locking her arms together and trapping his own by his side. ' _This is what I wanted._ '

"Neo, what are you doing?!"

' _What you planned on doing anyway._ ' As the sound started, Fox suddenly clued on to her plan.

"Yatsu! Quick!" The giant nodded, then ran and scooped Nora up and, using all his might, hurled her towards the pair, the Valkyrie giggling all the way. Nora tackled the pair to the ground as the sound grew closer to its peak.

"Hey there" she grinned. Neo smiled as Nora removed her from Fox and caught her in a bear hug.

"Nora, it may hurt a lot," Fox reminded her in a hurry, "you and Neo."

"I know, silly. But I'm gonna be bouncing off the walls in a minute!"

"Gods help us..." Ren muttered as he saw the sight unfold in front of him. The pause between the end of the sound and the start of the pain seemed eerily long, but the pained expressions of the Faunus' present said otherwise.

"It's still going!" Velvet cried, "they're going to kill her!" Pink and brown blinked to white in fear as she looked at Fox, who saw her very Aura almost shake in fear. Regardless of the risk, Fox stood and hugged Neo tight.

' _You'll die if you stay here_ ' Neo mentioned, but at the same time not releasing her hold on the young man.

"Why would I want to live without you in my life?" Tears formed in Neo's eyes as she started to shift her head closer to his.

' _Sap_.'

' _Love you too._ '

Their lips connected for all of two seconds before the electricity started flowing. Velvet wasn't kidding, this was meant to kill. The shock was near unbearable and Fox wanted to cry in pain, but deep down he felt bad for the fact that he could and Neo - who was getting much more of a shock than he was - couldn't. The couple remained embracing even through it all whilst Nora stood there taking as much of the onslaught as she could. Her hands moved to Neo's wrists and clamped tight onto the bracelets she was given. With a cry of effort, Nora's fingers started digging into the metal, the electricity giving her a new lease of life and boosting her power to levels she hadn't experienced before. In a couple of seconds, she shattered the metal and send an electric blue pulse of energy outwards from the breaking point, flinging most of the students back from the blast. When the dust finally settled, Nora was equally buzzing with energy but exhausted at the same time. Fox's skin was singed in a couple of places, but overall he seemed relatively okay. Neo, on the other hand, looked about ready to die there and then. Her skin was pale, more so than before, and it was covered in streaks where the bolts of lightning had arced over her body. Nora had taken a lot of it, but Neo still came out worst.

' _Fox..._ ' she managed, her eyes opening after a lot of effort. He returned the gesture, and with a small gasp from him, Neo looked back into copper brown eyes once more.

' _Nice to see you again Neo._ '

' _Take our card..._ ' she started, her eyes becoming heavier and consciousness fading fast, ' _Ruby's now owed a lot of cookies..._ ' The couple smiled before the mute drifted into unconsciousness and experienced the first decent rest she'd had in nearly a month.

* * *

 **{END OF PART 6}**

* * *

So yeah, Neo wanted to do that all along. If you look back, I never say that she wanted to kill him, or that she was brainwashed to do so, just 'conditioned' - and even then she went against that. She hadn't done any bad in all this time - note how she didn't kill anyone.

"Oh, what about Hai-no Hana?" I hear you cry. The first guy at the Inn? I never mentioned what was written on there; I always thought that it'd be something along the lines of: **I need you to gather as much red dye and water as you can - the village has got a photoshoot tomorrow.** Vague enough for her to find it funny whilst still getting the point across. Yes, she started shooting - never said what with. Telescopic lens? Rifles have them too, but I deliberately used 'telescopic _lens_ ' because I know rifles have 'telescopic _sights_ ' and those who know a thing or two may have figured it out back then. The fires? They were started before she started shooting - never said who by. They were just simple bonfires to make it look like the village was in ruins. The tapping on the ground three times before she left, it was a sign that she was leaving and thanked them for their co-operation, and that she'll be back soon to fix it.

She's a smart woman, at the end of the day. Sure, she was tasked with killing Fox, but she _always_ knew what she was doing. She played along to get out, and she knew that there'd be a plan to take her out when she got there - she has been with CFVY for the last Year and a bit.

In my eyes for this story, Salem is as evil as her canon counterpart, potentially even more so what with the whole Emerald and Cinder thing, but isn't as efficient as canon in terms of following through with plans.

I will aim for an upload next week, but due to reasons I am not delving into I cannot 100% promise I will get there.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	58. Bedbound

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Ruby and Weiss weren't there for the climax of the battle, so were very obviously equal parts scared and angry at seeing Neo brought into the Infirmary. Though they could only assume it meant that the mission was a success, she did dislocate Ruby's already poor shoulder, so there was a lot of explaining she needed to do.

"Ruby..." She turned to face her partner who, for one of the first times in the years they'd know each other, looked genuinely terrified.

"Weiss? What's wrong?" As much as she tried, she couldn't hide her feelings away from Ruby, as much as she tried.

"I will be completely honest with you Ruby; I can't do this anymore." Those words caused the young leader's heart to sink. This was not how she wanted her day to go at all.

"Weiss..." she muttered with shakey breath, "What'd you mean? Are we... are you..." The prospect of rejection stung like a blade and tears couldn't be stopped. The reaper, usually brave and strong, crumbled and started crying. "Weiss please! Don't do that! Don't-"

"Ruby! Let me finish."

"But if I let you finish then that means we finish and I don't want us to because we've grown so close over the past years even though we weren't supposed to because of your Father and now I feel like I've just become a burden to you and you're breaking up with me even though we were never technically together but we were so close we might as well have been and I don't want that!" Through the crying, Weiss cuddled up to Ruby and let out a small laugh.

"Oh Ruby, you dolt..." The younger woman gasped and looked at her partner with teary eyes.

"You only say that when you care... that means..."

"That I'm not breaking up with you, yes." Ruby couldn't stop herself, she flung straight at Weiss with a powerful hug, even from such a short distance away. "Oof! Easy Ruby, your arm won't get better if you keep doing that."

"Sorry." She also realised that she was hugging Weiss. "Ah! Sorry! I know we shouldn't be hugging but it felt do right to do and I couldn't stop myself and I-" The Heiress placed a finger on Ruby's lips, cutting her babbling completely.

"Stop. Honestly, I don't know why I put up with you." The pained look came back to the young Huntress. "Oh, wait, I do know." Without warning, Weiss leaned in and placed a small but tender kiss on Ruby's forehead. "It's because I care for you too much." At this point all Ruby could do was make odd noises; it was about all she could do, but it summed up her thoughts perfectly - all over the place and unable to form words to describe it. "When I said I can't do this anymore, I meant about this whole waiting thing. I like to think I gained a lot of patience when I was younger-" Ruby softly giggled at that, earning her a glare that didn't fazed her at all anymore, she saw past the icy exterior "-and even so, there was only so much I could take. This, what my Father is doing to us, is wrong. We both like each other a lot, and have done for a long while now. I went to my Father because I was unsure of what to do and because it was what Winter suggested; second biggest mistake of my life."

"What was the biggest?"

"Listening to him. He forced us into doing this because it was his way of controlling us. By taking things as slowly as he could force them to go, it made things more difficult. It's his game. A game he always wins in the end. Winter lost. She went too far too fast and as such my Father refused her the role of Heiress. She broke up with her boyfriend just to get back on his good side, but the damage had been done and his word was spoken. She wallowed for about a month before she decided that if she was going to essentially be disowned by him, then she could do what she wanted in life. That's how she came to be part of the Atlas Military. As for me, I was too young to truly realise what had happened with her. But now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to deal with the same things she did, I have the upmost respect for her, more than my Father could ever earn from me."

"So... what does that have to do with us?"

"Everything. I am doing what she did, only I'm being _pro-_ active whilst Winter was _re-_ active. The reason my Father wanted me to wait as long as possible with you was because he still saw it in me that I'd prioritise the Schnee Dust Company over anyone else on Remnant. It's what he did, and I have to live without a Mother as a reminder of his acts. She isn't dead, just drinking her life away in the gardens back home. I don't want it anymore. I plan to move as much money as I can away from any accounts he may hold over me so I'm not completely cutting myself off, then I will inform him that there is one thing I care for more in this world than being the Heir to a company I had lost interest in being part of a while ago. Ruby Rose, I love you too much to let him get in the way anymore."

Both of them had wanted to do this for a long time, but Weiss was adament on keeping to the book that she and Ruby wrote up to please her Father, again not because she really wanted to. Admittedly, they did make constant revisions to the content a lot, more in recent months than at the start - but this never moved. Now that Weiss had thrown that book out of the window (only metaphorically, the literal part shall come later) there was nothing to stop her. The couple's lips connected and nearly 14 months worth of feelings poured out in that one gesture. Ruby's good arm came up to cup Weiss' cheek whilst the platinum haired woman wrapped her arm around her younger leader's head, resting her hand on the back of it.

The girls' lips parted but their foreheads remained touching. "I've been wanting to do that for a long time." Only after each girl had spoken did they register that the other had said the exact same thing at the exact same time. Their eyes widened, silver eyes staring into ice blue, and after a second of letting the situation sink in, they both laughed.

"I love you Weiss. Gods, I love you so much."

"I love you too Ruby."

"Well it's about damn time." Both girls nearly jumped out of their skins when Yang spoke, her arm wrapped around Blake and her signature grin plastered all over it.

" _Yang Xiao Long!_ Do you have _any_ concept of privacy?!"

"Uh oh, she used my full name. I'm in big trouble..." she 'whispered' to Blake, clearly trying to wind Weiss up. And it was working wonders.

"How did you even get in here without us hearing you?"

"A lot more of our traits are bleeding into one another now that the initial year has passed. Yang can be a bit quieter at times-"

"Which is great for sneaking into a room with my baby sister and her girlfriend making out and surprising them!"

"-and I tend to be a bit more adventurous with certain things than I usually was before."

"We'd noticed" their leader deadpanned. The Faunus blushed heavily, turning to face her Mate with a look of both panic and anger.

"I _told_ you they'd hear us!" Yang looked panicked and turned to Ruby, who sat in her bed with her arms folded and a scowl planted on her face.

"Rubes, I think it's time you and I had 'The Talk'."

"Yang I am not a child!" she screamed, trying to jump up and hit her sister. The combination of Weiss holdong her down and the sudden jarring pain on her left hand side halted her charge at the blonde, who at this point was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. The actually Cat in the room looked just about as displeased as the soon-to-be-ex-Heiress was, but Yang knew all too well that at least one of them didn't act the way they looked.

"You can't hide it Blakey" she gently reminded her Partner.

"I'm trying to not annoy Weiss and Ruby any more than they already are," she retorted, "kindly shut up about it."

"Actually, it is a good thing you two are here," the blue eyed girl mentioned, gesturing for the older two to sit down, "we need to discuss a few things together as a team. Most importantly, the best way for me to inform my Father that I am stepping down as Heiress because my love life is more important than the company."

"Wow..." was all Yang could manage, which was one word more than Blake. "Why'd you want to do that Ice Queen?"

"Because fuck him, that's why!" Everyone was taken aback by Weiss' sudden potty mouth, including Weiss herself. But soon a small smirk found its way onto her lips. "It's so nice to be able to say what I want without fear of being repremanded anymore."

"Easy their, Sailor," Blake joked, another one of Yang's traits slipping through, "you're still not out of his grasp just yet."

"But we are going to fix that" came Yang's response, awash with a newfound respect for the young woman.

"And we're going to do it as a team!" WBY all nodded at their leader's statement, knowing it to be true. "But first..." this however, took them by surprise, "...can someone get me a shot of Morphine or something? My arm is killing me right now." The brunette's awkward grin only made it easier for the older three to burst into laughter, closely followed by Ruby herself.

* * *

The beeping continued steadily, which was good. Her breathing was constant and comfortable, which was also good. What wasn't was the uneasy feeling that something was wrong. Oum only knows how many times she had been shocked like that, but if what Fox had said was to be believed then it was at least 10 - and everyone knew that number was most likely massively lower than it really was. Yatsuhashi was sat with Velvet and Coco with her, watching over and making sure she was okay. Fox wasn't there at present, he had a few errands he needed to run, and now that he had his sight back, running them was so much easier. In his place was Lulu, who had opted to stay because she felt bad for hitting her with that attack and she wanted to be there to check the damage. She hadn't used that attack on a person in a very long time, only ever opting to use it under the most extreme of circumstances on various Creatures of Grimm, so her worry was understandable. CVY and Lulu maintained light conversation just to keep the volume in the room from above silence, and they remained that way until the topic of the Second Year's semblance came up.

"In a sense it's a hereditary semblance, much like the Schnees with their glyphs. Persimmons have naturally higher Aura levels than most families because of this. We can manipulate our Aura to essentially make energy weapons. There have been a few of our family in the past who have managed to create weapons using only their imagination and perserverance, however most of us need to have a conduit to do so. That's where our weapons come in, they're there to better help us chanel our own Aura to better suit our personal needs. My Chakram were perfect for me because of how I like to keep fighting in enclosed spaces, but also have the option for longer ranged combat if push came to shove. Ever since I've had them I've made many adjustments and modifications to make them my own. I normally have had great control over my semblance, and the Chakram helped massively, however the first time I used my semblance for that energy beam was... costly."

"You didn't kill anyone, did you?" came the anxious reply of Coco.

"Dust, no. I didn't mean 'people's lives' costly, I meant more 'property damage' costly."

"Phew," she sighed, wiping her brow as a joke gesture but realising that she did actually wipe away a small amount of sweat that had started to form on her forehead. The thought of having her accidently kill someone through a weapon mishap was a thought that was all too scary and one she wished she had never thought of in the first place. "I know the feeling. First time I fired my weapon, I wasn't prepared for the recoil and I ended up being lifted off the ground and flying about 20 metres backwards, I practically destroyed half the wall I was firing towards as my safety barrier and I even chopped down a few trees in the process; all whilst simultaneously screaming like a child and missing my intended target entirely."

"Wow, and I thought mine was bad. But at least yours was outside. When he thought I was ready, my Father took me to our indoors firing range to get an idea of how the weapons would work at a distance. I first started firing the energy from my hand in small bursts, which was really cool when I started, but after a few shots I got cocky and held the shot for too long. That's when I realised I could fire a beam of energy if I did that. It was unchecked, so I ended up burning a thick 'battle scar' right into the walls and ceiling. Fair's to say, I needed to make some adjustments to my weapons to keep that beam in check." The four of them laughed at the younger girl's misfortune, recounting tales of their own weapon mishaps. They were happy, until they were silenced by the soft yet strained groaning from Neo as she drifted back into consciousness.

"Welcome back Neo." The tri coloured woman grimaced and started signing to them.

" _Was your voice always that low, or are you just doing that deliberately?_ " Yatsuhashi couldn't help himself but smile, as did Coco and Velvet, seeing their teammate back to her normal ways. Lulu looked around a little worried before speaking up.

"Yeah... I have no idea what you just said." She had a right to be so, for all she knew they could have been sharing a joke at her own expense.

"Sorry, I forget sometimes that not everybody knows Sign - even though we all should. But how did you speak with Neo before if you couldn't understand her?"

"Well; a) Pen & Paper, b) Scrolls, or c) Fox." Velvet shrugged and nodded.

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But regardless, it had nothing to do with you." Lulu breathed a sigh of relief.

" _Wait, where is Fox?_ " The bedbound woman looked around frantically, her breathing getting quicker and shallower, eyes darting backwards and forwards on the verge of turning white and her heartrate climbing at a worryingly fast rate. Coco was quick to notice this and went straight to the bed, removing her sunglasses en route.

"Hey Neo, look at me. Focus on me." Her hands rested on the smaller woman's shoulders with a soft and comforting yet firm grip. "Breathe Neo." It took a couple of seconds for the orders to register with the mute, but eventually they sunk in and she began coming down off her self-induced panic. "Fox is out at the moment."

"You sent him off to run some errands" Velvet added. "Before you lost consciousness, he said you told him to go get Ruby a box of her favourite cookies because of what you did to her." This time, Neo's eyes did indeed turn vanilla white. As they did, tears started running down her face and she began to cry. Coco's hands moved from their position on her shoulders to wrap them around the woman's neck, getting her in a nice, warm, reassuring hug, one that Neo reciprocated.

"Shh, it's okay Neo. Don't blame yourself, you didn't know what you-" The fashionista stopped herself when she felt Neo signing behind her back, but not wanting to release the hug she let someone else dictate to her once the message was over. "What'd she say guys?"

"She said," Yatsuhashi began, "that she did have complete awareness of what she was doing the entire time. Salem thought that she had brainwashed her completely, but she was just playing along. Ruby was never meant to be hurt like this." Coco eased out of the hug, letting Neo talk to her directly.

" _I was always aware, so I didn't mean to hurt Ruby like I did. I only meant to push her arm a little bit and throw her off, there was no intention to dislocate it and now I feel bad for..._ " she couldn't finish signing as the tears came back in full force.

"Neo, Neo it's alright. If you explain that to her I am positive she will be okay. She'll be sore for a while, but she's a strong girl." The sobbing continued, even after those kind words of encouragement. Everyone just let the tears flow, it would be easier for her.

After 10 minutes of silent sobs that had subsided eventually, a familiar looking copper haired boy walked through the door. Neo's eyes lit up for the first time since they properly saw each other last. He smiled at the sight, his own eyes adjusting once more to having vision.

"Hey guys." He cast his eyes to the woman in the Infirmary bed, her hair a mess having been shocked to Kingdom Come and back, for the past few weeks and her body most likely bruised but her smile still remaining strong on seeing him again. "How you holding up Neo?"

' _My eyes sting from all the crying I've been doing, most of my body aches and I'm pretty sure I can feel my side burning from where Lulu shot me._ ' She rubbed the spot in question to emphasise her point.

"Sorry, I needed to do something and that was the first thing that came to mind" the Second Year said, having guessed what she was trying to say based off of Fox's comment and Neo's gesture. The smile she received from the ice cream girl affirmed her guess. Neo's head turned back to Fox.

' _I sent you off to get cookies. Did she enjoy them?_ '

"Of course she did. She says thanks and they'll be wanting an explanation from you, they took my word for the moment but that may not hold for long."

' _I don't blame them. I wouldn't trust me after what I did._ ' She grinned as tears formed in her eyes once again. ' _Now get over here before I start crying again; it's been a month since I saw you last and I am in desperate need of a big cuddle right now._ ' The copper eyed boy could help himself but smile, then happily granted the request. He walked up to the bed Neo was in and lay down on the far side, wrapping his scarred arms around her neck. She hugged him too, holding onto his waist with both arms. She leaned in, eager to take in the smell of him. It had been so long for her since she'd done this last, and she felt that she needed to make up for the deficit in her life. ' _I have missed this so much, you have no idea..._ '

"I'm a little confused though, how is it that you said a month has passed? It's been, like, three days."

"I, too, would like to hear an explanation for this" said Yatsuhashi on hearing Fox's remark. Seeing as how the conversation was most likely going to turn into something either personal and / or something she didn't particularly want to be a part of, Lulu stood and headed for the door.

"I think I'll leave you five alone for now, you've obviously got some catching up to do."

' _Stop her._ '

"Wait, Lulu!" Fox's call managed to reach her before she had completely disappeared from earshot. As she popped her head back in the room, Fox nodded at Neo as she told him what she wanted him to relay to her. "Neo wanted to tell you, but can't for obvious reasons. We've taken on a mission to 'The Four Season Springs'. We're going to attempt to find and destroy that monster that caught you off guard." The grey and orange themed girl exhaled in thankful disbelief.

"You guys... everyone's going to be thrilled to hear that, they are. Kick its ass for us." With that, she left the room. Velvet broke the silence.

"She is such a sweet girl."

" _You have Coco, are you not satisfied with her anymore?_ "

"That's not-"

"Velvet, you vile Faunus! How could you?" The fashionista threw the back of her hand to her forehead in an extreme diva overreaction - played for laughs, of course. She matched the ridiculous gesture with an equally ridiculous and dramatic voice. "After everything I have done for you, your eyes fall to another woman. A Persimmon too; of all who could have caught your eye." She stood now, acting out her scene without a care in the world. "I am an Adel, sworn enemy of the Persimmon. They stole from us back in days gone, and now they attempt to steal from us again. Well I say, no more!" With a flick of the hair and an extreme turned up nose, she marched out of the room in a faux huff, causing laughs from the three others who could. Neo was laughing too, but no one could hear.

"It's good to have you back Neo, it really is."

" _It's good to be back. I missed you all. I think I'll leave my explaining for later, now I just want a bit of rest and some cuddle time with my boyfriend._ "

"That's fine." Velvet looked like she was about to continue, but her ears caught the conversation of Coco from outside, the caramel coloured girl having left the door ajar from her exit.

"Lulu Persimmon you fiend! You have stolen the eyes and heart of my beloved cottontail, Velvet. Prepare for death!" The Rabbit Faunus took it all as a bit of light humour at her expense, considering her enhanced hearing. That was, until the next few sounds came to light.

"Coco, what are you doing?!"

 _WWRRRRRRRRRR_

"No! Have mercy!"

"Coco, NO!" The mage never moved so fast in her life, springing from her position in the chair and throwing herself out of the door towards her girlfriend, who had pulled her heavy-duty weapon out and was most likely literally threatening the Second Year with the six barrels of whirling death. Once she'd disappeared and Yatsuhashi following soon after, Fox and Neo were left alone in the room in/on the Infirmary bed. The taller of the two rest his head atop the other and sighed.

"Aren't you glad to be back?" he asked, not really needing an answer but eager to hear it nonetheless.

' _Coco threatening someone to protect Velvet, Velvs being secondhand embarrassed of Coco doing it, Yatsu being quiet - it's like I never left._ '

* * *

 **~-OMAKE-~**

Team JPR walked away from it all battered and bruised. All three of them collectively agreed, it was a hard fought battle, harder than any they had faced before. Hopefully, they never would have to face one similar to it again. They passed Professor Ozpin in the hallway.

"Ah, hello there you three. I trust everything went well?" Hesitant at first, the resident ninja slowly nodded at the question.

"Just... please keep her safe. She is family to us."

"Of course. We wouldn't do anything less for our students." Breathing a sigh of relief, the four of them walked away.

Back in the room the students just walked out of, Nora Valkyrie was strapped in a straight jacket, tied together with thick metals chains, bolted to the floor and ceiling with a dozen tranquilizers trained on her body. She was twitching and shaking violently, even as three Goliath tranquilizers were stuck in her neck.

"So... much... energy!" she buzzed, grinning maniacally at the 'hidden' camera in the corner of the room. That grin turned into a full blown cackle that echoed throughout the Infirmary, even through the padded walls she was confined behind.

* * *

Seventh Story Arc is a go!

The team are finally getting some action as a fully fledged, fully realised unit, as opposed to the four person team, ft. Neo that versed the Nuckelavee and the villains. It's a good'un, so I hope you stick around to see how it all pans out.

Also, thank you all for making **Senseless** my most successful bit of Fanfiction to date. So many views (for me), favourites, follows and reviews; it's all fantastic for a guy who just does all this in his spare time after work.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	59. A Vicious Streak a Mile Wide

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Have you ever been intimidated by a bunny? Threatened by one? They're not exactly the scariest animals known. They're not even on the list. Kittens are on the list (those claws can hurt something fierce). Bunnies? Not a chance... well, maybe one or two. Coco remembered when Velvet took her home over one break to meet her family and one of her Great-Aunts mentioned about a distant ancestor of theirs. Very calm and peaceful most of the time, but tended to have very violent outbursts when he felt threatened. An Albino Rabbit Faunus - which was just the epitome of every discriminatory thing on Remnant - with a very weird name too. Caerbannog, if she remembered correctly.

Besides him, a rare exception, most rabbits are completely harmless and are not threatening whatsoever.

Velvet stared at her girlfriend with the sternest face she could manage, but Coco found it very hard to keep a straight face when she did. Her nose wrinkled a little bit, her ears were pointed back a bit and she stood with her hands on her hips leaning towards the caramel coloured woman. If she was completely truthful, it was a really cute sight to see her try and be angry - she was so close to laughing or getting up and hugging her saying how adorable she looked when she was trying to be threatening. But Coco held back, at least for now.

"I still can't believe you did that. Do you know how scared I was?" With the expression she was sporting when she rounded the corner back then, Coco would have guessed 'I'm going have a heart attack if that happens again' levels of scared. "What were you thinking?"

"Honestly, I wanted to have a bit of fun and give Neo a good laugh. She _had_ been stuck essentially in a torture chamber for a month, she's going to need cheering up." With a heavy sigh and pinching the bridge of her nose, the mage responded.

"I am aware of that Coco. But why on _Remnant_ did the thought of you threatening Lulu with your weapon to get me running out of the room only to see you laughing at it cross your mind in the first place? That's just ridiculous!"

"Look, I'm sorry hunny-bun," she admitted, holding her hands up in defeat, "I got a little carried away, and I was improvising on the spot. It was the first thing I thought of, otherwise it's not improv."

"A little? Coco, you threatened her with a Gatling gun, how is _that_ getting 'a little carried away'?" The urge to laugh finally outweighed the seriousness of the conversation and Coco surrendered herself to the outburst. She was thankful that she'd put her sunglasses back on before this talk happened, else there was a very strong possibility that she would have been laughing much earlier. "Now what?!"

"I'm... hahaha... oh, I'm sorry hun, I... hahahaha, I... ha... I can't take you seriously when you... try to threaten me... hehehe. Oh, you're just too adorable to be scary." With all the anger on Velvet's part, Lulu thought that she could try and sneak away back to the class she was supposed to be in right now. The girl managed to make it three shuffled steps from where she originally was before a hard light sword plunged itself straight into the wall in front of her face.

"Don't even think about taking another step. I still need to speak with you." Coco had been on a team with Velvet for 3 years, and her girlfriend for a large portion of that; she was used to her 'threatening' behaviour to the point it clearly didn't bother her anymore. Lulu had never experienced it and was understandably scared when the mage threw a sword inches from her face and embedded it into the wall with a scowl that would have killed her where she stood if looks could do such a thing. There was almost an evil in the voice that she was not willing to see be completely unleashed, so within the blink of an eye the girl returned to where she was before that.

' _How can she be so shy and timid one minute then downright terrifying the next?_ ' the orange and grey girl thought to herself, scared to even faintly move a muscle in thought.

Outside the room, the remaining members of CFVYN stood patiently waiting, Neo having been discharged but informed to keep away from strenuous activities for the next day or two to let things heal naturally.

"Velvet must be really annoyed with her if she resorted to throwing weapons around" Yatsuhashi commented, watching as the hard light blade faded from the wall opposite him.

" _I think that one must have been for Lulu; there would have been far more shouting if it was for Coco._ "

"True." Fox glanced up at the clock down the hall, noting the time. "But do you think she could hurry it up a little? I know what Viola's like when she gets worried first-hand. Let me tell you, _my_ hand felt weird for days after with how much she was squeezing it in fear."

' _I dunno, it seemed fine to me that night._ '

' _You have been gone for a handful of days; why is it every time I want to talk about something it always comes back to sex with you?_ '

' _Give a girl a break, I'd been tortured for a month and I am understandably pent up from not getting any time for fun._ ' He rolled his eyes with a smirk, obviously not annoyed at her but playing along for the sake of it. ' _Also, "handful"? Really?_ ' Before he got a chance to let his blush cover his entire face, the door opened and the girls in there walked out, Velvet bringing up the rear.

"Are you all alright now?" Yatsuhashi was greeted with two almost sheepish nods from the oldest and youngest asked. The middle child walked past the pair of them and spoke directly to her giant teammate.

"They're fine Yatsu. Both of them have apologised for scaring me and they Won't. Do. It. Again." The last for words were all punctuated with firm pauses after every word, something the younger of the two flinched at. "Will you?"

"I've learnt my lesson," Lulu said, keeping her gazed fixed anywhere but the scarily intimidating looking Faunus stood in front of her, "now can I shoot off now before I get an even bigger bollocking from my team leader?"

' _Asking permission to leave? Jeez, Velvet can be ruthless when she wants to be._ ' The copper haired boy nodded at his girlfriend's inner comment as the Faunus nodded and let the warrior leave, with an express warning to never do that again because "I have over two dozen weapons stored in my camera, each with many different ways of making you pay for doing that again" - Velvet can be _incredibly_ ruthless, so much so it actually scared a few of them. When the girl had gone, she turned her attention to her girlfriend.

"And as for you..." even behind sunglasses all three onlookers saw the panic that appeared in her eyes.

"Looks, Velvs, I said it was just a-" The fashionista was silenced by Velvet holding up a hand.

"You are going to take me to dinner."

"I... what? You give poor Lulu a hard time for it and then change to 'let's eat out' for me?" Fox immaturely giggled, as did Neo, albeit silently.

"You are going to take myself and Yatsuhashi out for a nice dinner on the town, preferably the far side - we haven't been there in a while. That means that Fox and Neo will have the dorm all to themselves for a few hours. They deserve it. Then tomorrow, we can head off to 'The Four Season Springs' and get this mission done. C'mon Yatsu, let's go get our outfits sorted." The bunny started walking, but stopped after only a couple of steps, turning her head back to stare at Coco and spoke with an eerily genuine smile. "Nothing too fancy though, hun. I'm not in the mood to properly dress up tonight." With that final remark, she walked off, grabbing the tank's hand as she passed and almost dragging him for the first few steps before he complied and started walking with her. Coco could do nothing but stare completely slack-jawed at what just happened.

' _Okay,_ _ **that**_ _, I was not expecting..._ '

"I don't think any of us were..."

* * *

Yatsuhashi exited the bathroom in his outfit for the night, not wanting to intrude on anyone getting changed in the dorm. He had always done that out of respect for everyone else, all of whom were very comfortable with themselves among their teammates. Not to say he wasn't, but old habits. Not wanting to be too informal, he wore a deep forest green shirt, a pair of mid blue chinos and a pair of smart boots. Velvet was dressed in a similar smart-casual way with a pair of form fitting blue jeans, mint coloured Converse, white top and a mint coloured scarf, topped off with a darker coat because of the slight chill in the air. Coco, after finally being snapped out of the state she was in when the proposition was given to her, got changed into a simple black dress adorned with sparse red flowers that came down to just past her knees, with a pair of simple black flats, a scarlet red functioning handbag, rather than the giant one she was so used to carrying around, and a deep burgundy scarf.

" _You all look really nice tonight_ " Neo mentioned, trying to diffuse the inescapably high tension between the two girls.

"Thank you Neo. Well then," the mage smiled at her partner, who's mouth curled up in a worried smile at how calm Velvet was being about the whole situation, "shall we get going you two?"

"I can't wait, hun." Any hint of sarcasm that may have been there normally was nowhere in sight; Coco knew that if Velvet got ticked off she might as well kiss all snuggling privileges goodbye for months, maybe even years, to come. "Enjoy yourselves guys. Don't do anything I won't be doing for a while." Once again, everything she said was with complete seriousness, and whilst there was always that little bit in the back of her head that hoped otherwise, the rest of her brain knew that the statement would most likely be ringing true.

"Wow Coco, you know me so well. You're right, you won't."

' _And_ _ **there**_ _it is, the nail in the coffin._ ' Coco was the first to leave, with Yatsuhashi in close pursuit to make sure she didn't do anything stupid. Again. Velvet hung back to hug the reunited pair.

"I'm so glad you're back together. I know it wasn't a lot on our end, but it must have been hell for you Neo." The mute responded with a nod, she didn't need any more than that.

"Velvet, could you do us a favour?" the scarred boy asked, "Don't stay mad at Coco. She was just trying to lighten the mood."

"Oh, I'm not actually mad with her anymore." Both Fox and Neo recoiled slightly at the revelation. "I was mad for, like, a minute or two. It was just some light humour. This," she indicated to the door, implying the whole dinner thing, "is just my bit of fun in return. She's going to be too scared even try anything remotely silly tonight."

" _Velvet Scarlatina, you sneaky little shit_ " Neo grinned as Fox laughed briefly and quietly.

"The Mark works both ways; she has moments where she's timid and frightened from me, and I can take her confidence and assertiveness every now and again. It's so much fun sometimes." On that last remark, the Faunus' face started glowing a little red at the memories she was obviously recalling.

" _I'll bet it was interesting._ "

"Neo..."

" _Come on, you_ _ **know**_ _that's what she was implying. Right Velvs?_ " With a quick smile, the mage spun and headed to the door, not wanting them to completely wander off without her.

"You've got three hours, minimum. Have fun you two!" With a final wink, Team CFVYN's dorm door was shut and Fox and Neo were alone, and they would be for at least the next few hours.

"So was that a 'Yes' or..."

' _It was a "Yes" Fox. She was implying exactly what I thought she was._ '

"Congratulations, you can read Velvet like a book."

' _A sexy book. Is it just me or has she gotten more attractive in the last month?_ '

"No, nothing has changed in the _days_ you weren't here."

' _Oh shush, that place messed with my head._ '

"Y'know, you never did explain how that room worked."

' _...no I didn't. Would you like me to wait, or would you rather just hear it now?_ '

"Now'll be fine."

' _Okay then, second question: do you want me to tell you before or after we've fucked each other's brains out?_ ' Fox couldn't stop himself from laughing at the direct proposition.

"Well, seeing as how you so eloquently phrased your question and deducing you are feeling a bit deprived, I'm going to say 'after'." He eased his way forwards as he spoke, their lips connecting mere moments after he whispered the final word. As their lips locked and the heat and passion started to rise much like when this first happened back on the Cliffside, Neo spoke to Fox with a grin on her face.

' _Right answer._ '

* * *

"So..." he panted, the past 40 minutes taking a lot out of him, "where'd you... want to start?" He flopped onto his back completely, resting on their bed.

' _Well, there's not a lot I can talk about with that place,_ ' she admitted, her inner voice not needing to breathe constantly despite the fact she was panting to an equal, if not greater, degree than Fox was at present, falling down beside him, ' _it was scary - that much is certain._ ' For emphasis, she cuddled closer to him, their naked bodies rubbing against one another giving her a comforting feeling that she had sorely missed in her month away from home, from him. The relieved exhale from her nose along with the accompanying smile made Fox "Aww" at the sight, but despite the praise she decided to ignore it in favour of pressing on. ' _It was always dark there, like it didn't feel like the sun was ever out, so the sky was a constant red colour. Every time I looked outside I always saw the shattered moon in the sky, and even so it didn't seem to move at all, even though time in my room was increased 20-fold._ '

"Still haven't explained that" he commented.

' _Hold your horses, I'm getting there._ ' She leaned up and pecked him on the tip of his nose, something that slightly took him aback but not something he was complaining about. ' _Be patient. First, clean._ ' The pair shifted, getting themselves clean with a quick shower each. After that and getting changed into their sleepwear, they went back to the bed, but made themselves more comfortable this time by actually climbing into bed rather than resting on it.

"Right, spit it out."

' _Oh, now you want me to._ '

"It would be-" Fox caught the meaning behind her phrasing. "Oh, for fuck's sake Neo!" he grumbled with fake annoyance with a roll of his eyes. Neo shot him a cheeky smirk. Honestly, he was happy to have her back, so he'd put up with her crudeness for a little while, but there were limits. "You knew what I meant, let's not fight over something trivial like this."

' _I'm just playing with you Fox._ '

"You did that earlier, now we talk." Neo silently scoffed, grinning at Fox's remark.

' _And you're saying_ _ **I'm**_ _doing that too often?_ '

"Hey, you threw the ball up, I just hit it. Now, let's hear it. Time moving 20 times faster, how is that even possible?"

' _Salem just said something about "The Relic". Does that mean anything to you?_ '

"I think Ozpin mentioned it once or twice - in his usual vague manner, of course. He mentioned how The Relics - there are multiple ones, apparently - are physical manifestations of the Gifts of the Gods; Knowledge, Creation, Destruction and Choice. My personal guess would be that if they are what he says they are, then She got a hold of one of those Relics. And my guess would be that Salem's after them all."

' _That is probably the most sense Ozpin has ever made; though you did through your own opinions in there, so he can't get all the credit for that._ ' Fox let out a little giggle as he pulled Neo a little closer and kissed the top of her forehead. He caught the smell of the shampoo she used, a smell of sweet citrus wafting through his nose. ' _Going off what you said,_ ' she continued, ' _my guess would be she either had the Relic of Creation or the Relic of Choice._ '

"What makes you think that Ni?" The ice cream girl's right eye changed its colour to match the pink of her left at the mention of her nickname. She wasn't even sure why Fox called her 'Ni', but even to this day it still made her heart flutter just hearing it. It didn't feel weird in any way, it wasn't discriminatory or harbour any malice in it, it was purely a nickname that Fox gave her; one that she enjoyed hearing immensely. "...Neo? Remnant to Neopolitan?" The woman shook her head, snapping herself out of her mini-daydream.

' _Sorry hun, lost in thought._ '

"So I noticed."

' _Well, it can't be the Destruction Relic, can it? So that one was out of the question straight away. It could be the Knowledge Relic, but the thing itself was being used to power the room, I remember that too, so I guessed it couldn't be that one. That leaves Creation and Choice. Creation is easy; Arthur Watts used the Relic to create a room that, when inside with the door closed, time moves 20 times faster than it does anywhere else._ '

"Makes sense, but why would it be constantly powering the room?" Neo pondered on that question for a bit longer than she had before; it was just a theory, but she still wanted to give the best answer she could.

' _It's an orb that has the potential to create anything, what's to stop them from using it to create an infinite energy supply to keep the room working? Maybe that's what she meant when she mentioned Watts had done incredible things. Maybe it's not supposed to be constantly creating as it is, yet he tinkered with it to make it so. That's... an insane prospect, changing something that - by the sound of things - was quite literally a gift from the Gods to your own will. And that's without that other Relic._ '

"Speaking of, why d'you think it was the Choice Relic?" The mute shrugged.

' _I mean, I_ _ **did**_ _think it was that, but I'm pretty sure I've talked myself out of it being that with the Creation reasoning._ '

"Yeah, but maybe it still is." Neo's eyes returned to their Heterochromatic norm as she cocked her head in confusion. "What if he chose that room to have time move faster than usual, and the fact the orb itself was there meant that it was such a substantial request that it needs to be essentially tethered to the room to keep it existing as they chose it to?"

' _I mean..._ '

"It's pretty good, right?"

' _It holds merit, I'll give you that. But I prefer my one better._ '

"Of course you do" he teased, prodding her when he spoke his comment. She didn't particularly like that, so she prodded back harder. It escalated from there pretty fast. Three more back and forth prods each before Neo opted for a push, which forced Fox to equal. It was only as Fox tried for his fifth push did Neo grab him by the shoulders as she was sent away, pulling him along. Their lips crashed together as she pulled him down and she initiated the making out. Sure, they'd spent the better part of the last hour making up for lost time on Neo's part, but that didn't rule out moments like this afterwards. The couple fought for dominance over and over again, Fox winning out sometimes due to what he believed was the fact that he was bigger and stronger than her. But in the end, Neo won because she was craftier, feistier and actually the stronger of the two.

' _You going to accept defeat yet, Foxy?_ '

' _In your dreams!_ ' he thought back - talking is very difficult to do when your tongue is fighting against someone else's tongue.

' _Nah, see in my dreams I'm constantly ramming you with my giant monster cock and you're taking it like a champ._ ' A phrase he _never_ would have thought he'd ever hear in his lifetime, especially coming from his girlfriend, Fox's eyes shot open and Neo capitalised on the fact he was distracted. She pushed him flat on his back and held him down by his shoulders. ' _You gonna submit now?_ '

"Yeah, okay..." he muttered. Neo beamed with a shut eyed smile and hugged his neck as she collapsed next to him.

' _Yay! Thank you Fox,_ ' she partially joked, ' _you're the best boyfriend on the planet._ '

"Yeah, one who - despite being straight - isn't actually bothered about the prospect of his girlfriend having sex with him the way she mentioned in her dream."

' _Really?_ ' she said, sitting up in surprise, ' _'cause I know Velvet and Coco have something that could do the trick._ ' There was a pregnant pause before he spoke again.

"We'll see." She threw her arms around him once again and kissed his cheek.

' _You really are the best boyfriend on the planet. I love you Fox._ '

"I love you too Neo." He kissed her forehead and lay down with her. She fell asleep in a few minutes, but he remained awake for a bit longer. ' _What the heck am I doing, suggesting that sort of thing? Isn't it going to be painful? Gods, why do I do these things?_ '

' _One,_ ' came the voice in his head. Fox slowly looked down to Neo, who was still asleep, but clearly not deep enough to block out everything coming in from Fox's mind, ' _you do it because you love me. Two, if we do everything right, take it slow, let me do the action whilst you call the shots, it shouldn't be painful. And three, you're not alone anymore Fox, I can hear your thoughts._ ' One eye creaked open to stare at Fox. ' _We'll talk about at some point in the future - it's not like anyone can hear us. For now, sleep. Not only have I missed having someone beside me in bed at night, I've just missed sleep in general._ ' With that, she shut her eye and rolled back to sleep.

* * *

And if you don't get the references in both the title and the first few paragraphs, we cannot be friends. Tell me if you did get it though.

So, random fact of awesomeness (for me, at least) but we've gotten our first glimpse at DBZ Abridged Episode 60! And do you know what that inspired me to do? Write a TFS RWBY story, that's what! It's called **Drunkle Seagull** , so check it out if you've got a spare 10 minutes or so. It's also the first story I've done that doesn't feature nor strongly imply BumbleBY as a ship (yes, I can grow and have my OTP take time on the bench) It took some time to get it down, but with the preview of Ep.60 I was motivated to write it out. So give it a looksee, if you would be so inclined.

Also, I need to throw another credit out to **|OmegaInfinity|** for the idea of Mate's Marks. I (foolishly) did not do that when the idea first came up, and whilst there had been a couple of people who saw the parallel, it was only recently that I was informed that I haven't creditted them. So, go give **'Linked in Life and Love'** a read: it's the story that inspired the idea. And it does a much better job than I ever could with explaining everything.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	60. On a Path to Reclaim What Was Lost

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Team CFVYN made one last stop at Beacon before they left for 'The Four Season Springs' the next morning. They had to leave early, but not stupidly early, so they could make one quick stop. After Neo knocked three times on the door, Quentin opened the door to be greeted by the Fourth Year Team.

"Oh, morning all." He let out a small yawn before continuing on, "and what do I owe this unexpected pleasure this morning?"

"We just wanted to let you know that we were heading off on our mission" Velvet mentioned with a slight bounce in her words.

"Uh huh..." His eyes darted between the five of them without a clue as to why they would be there. "Is... that all?"

"Did Lulu not mention where we're going?" the Faunus asked.

The only male of HLQN stood there for a second before leaning back into the room. "Lu?"

"Yeah?" The slight muffling and echoing of her voice told the five piece team that she was in the bathroom.

"Team CFVYN are here saying that you know something we don't."

"Huh?" A few seconds later, they all heard the inner door open and feet crossing over to them. Lulu popped her head around the door, her hair wrapped in an orange towel and her body covered by another, larger towel. "Oh, hey guys. Look, Velvet, I am still really sorry for what I did yesterday."

"Nonsense Lulu, if anything I should be the one apologising. I wasn't really mad at you, or Coco for that matter."

"What?!" Both girls in question raised their voices to near shouting, having both been on the receiving end of a Goodwitch detention for excessive noise made them fully aware that shouting outright would be a death sentence - the crop wielder always did like to increase the punishment for repeat offenders to hammer home the point. Sadly for her, that also highlighted the masochists in the school who deliberately kept repeating smaller rule violations just to get a Goodwitch detention.

Velvet just nonchalantly continued her talk with the younger fashion girl. "Sure, I was a bit annoyed at first, but I saw the joke. However, I honestly felt like I needed to be treated a bit, so I feigned the anger at you for the duration of yesterday, and that got me a nice free dinner." The innocent Rabbit turned to face her partner who, understandably, was looking a little betrayed. "I honestly meant no harm sweetheart." Coco turned to her team, who hadn't reacted to the news at all.

"Did you three know?"

"I was told when she dragged me off in the Infirmary," Yatsuhashi admitted.

" _And we were told just before you all left for the dinner._ " Coco turned back to Velvet, waited a few seconds to let everything that had just be said sink in, then kissed her Mate.

"You did good, you crafty little devil." The Rabbit shrugged, not wanting to revel too much in her own glory.

"So... why did you knock on our door this early?" asked Quentin, breaking them out of their own little conversation.

"Oops," Velvet apologised, then offered their explanation, "well, Neo chose our first mission as Fourth Year students, and we're going to be clearing out Grimm nests and defeating an unknown Grimm at 'The Four Season Springs'." Quentin's eyes widened as the information registered with his slower morning brain. "We're doing for you guys, essentially on Neo's request. She told us about how you were, and kind of still are, after your time there and it hurt her a lot." Yatsuhashi stepped forward and placed a hand on the tri coloured girl's shoulder.

"And any friend of Neo's is a friend of ours. We wanted to help her help you."

"You mean that?" came the voice of Viola from behind the pair at the door. They parted slightly so that the older team could see her, currently still in bed with the covers drawn up to cover herself, Nylan still sleeping beside her.

"Of course we do Viola," Fox shot her a smile and continued, "Neo was really down when she didn't hear from or see you for all that time, to a pretty bad degree. If doing this will ease her mind as well as get some payback for you then we're going to be with her every step of the way."

"Oum, what did we do to deserve a friend like you, Neo?" The woman in question shot their team leader a quick wink. "Yeah, yeah, thanks for that too, I guess." With a quick glance over to her right to her sleeping girlfriend, Viola shifted her attention back to the five standing outside. "Now get out of here, you've got some Grimm to kill and some payback to cash." They all nodded and walked off back to their dorm to grab their stuff, wishing their goodbyes as the younger students wished them all good luck.

"Vy..." the Cheetah yawned groggily, turning over but not fully waking up, "who was that?"

"That was Team CFVYN. There off to do a mission to kill that thing that kicked our asses back at 'Four Seasons'."

"That's nice..." the said as she drifted back into sleep.

"Do you not want to wake her up? It _is_ a Friday and we do have a lecture with Professor Port first thing."

"Lulu, we've got a hectic week coming up for us. Nylan's going into heat on Tuesday and she will stay that way for the next 6-7 days. I think she deserves all the rest she can get. In all fairness, so do I - seeing as how you two won't help us."

"You know full well we're both not into girls" Quentin mentioned.

"Never know unless you try."

"I _have_ tried, that's how I know."

"And I don't want to try. Sorry," Lulu said, unravelling the towel on her head as she made her way back to the bathroom "but you're on your own for this one Viola."

"Fine, it's your loss. But remember the rules we agreed on." The girl rolled her eyes as she shut the bathroom door, and Quentin headed out for breakfast, letting the other two girls go back to their slumber in peace.

* * *

Coco gave the instructions they had been given to the guys in the cockpit of the Bullhead as the rest of her team filed in. Each of them had packed a decent amount of clothing for the mission, considering they were going to be situated actually at the resort itself so they didn't need to travel as light as they normally would have. Coco took this to the extreme, packing almost as if she was going on holiday which, to her, the team was. Yatsuhashi, naturally, took the other end of the spectrum, fitting everything he needed essentially into a single day sack; though to be fair his bags had to be bigger than everyone else's, otherwise they would look comically small on him, so saying he got his belongings for the mission to fit into one of his bags wasn't as big of an achievement as others may think. Once the five of them were in, the pilots took off and headed for their destination.

Much to the confusion of the students, the Bullhead came to a stop just on the outskirts of Vale near one of the roads out.

"Why are we stopping?" the leader asked the group before heading to the cockpit to ask the same question. "We haven't even left Vale yet."

"Fully aware of that, Miss. But your teammate back there gave us instructions to stop here first, said she had important business she needed to attend to first." Sunglasses were lowered off of brown eyes as they stared at Velvet and Neo, the only other two girls in the Bullhead. Velvet heard the conversation, so she shook her head. Neo didn't hear the conversation, but attempted to leave, so Coco naturally put 2 and 2 together.

"Neo!" she called over the engines. Nothing; the engines were roaring too loud. Fox noticed her, so she got him to get his girlfriend's attention, which he did. Coco now looked at Neo and signed to her for an explanation. " _This better not be anything silly or meaningless._ "

" _It's not, trust me. But I do want Fox to come with me._ " As the engines were turned off, lowering the noise back to a comfortable level, Coco spoke to Neo using words again.

"And why does he need to? If it's something that needs to be done, surely it'd be done quicker with just the one of you."

" _No, it needs both of us really. I'm the one who knows about it though._ " The fashionista looked her teammate up and down, trying to spot if she was lying. She couldn't see any indication of it, so ultimately, she relented.

"Fine. But if he comes back severely injured or dead, I'm killing you personally."

" _He shouldn't, it will be fine._ " The petite woman hopped out, parasol slung over her shoulder, and beckoned her boyfriend to follow. Naturally, he was initially hesitant.

"She says you need to go." Fox glanced back at Velvet, who obviously saw the conversation happening and read what Neo spoke. After that, Fox went with her. "I swear, it never gets easier with them."

"Count yourself lucky Velvs, at least you're not leading them." Fox and Neo made their way down the road slightly and towards a small hotel not too far from where they had landed.

"Look Neo, if you wanted to do anything else, we could have waited until we were at the resort or something. We didn't need to go to a hotel."

' _As hilarious as it is to know that's where your mind first went to, that's not why we're here,_ ' she pushed the glass door open and stepped inside, ' _we've got a couple of people we need to have a discussion with._ ' Once they were both inside the Notell Hotel, Neo started typing up what she was going to say as they made their way to the front desk.

"Mornin' you two. Unfortunately, we don't let new bookings in until 4:00pm, so I'm afraid you'll need to come back later." Neo simply held the Scroll up to the man.

 **Are there two women currently staying here? One with dark skin and green hair, the other with tattoos and amber eyes? We just need to speak with them briefly, we won't be staying.**

"There may be... why do you need to know?"

"They're part of her old team," Fox jumped in before Neo could even think of an excuse, "she heard about what happened to them and she wanted to see them." Honestly, the old 'We were part of a team' can of worms didn't need reopening, but it was out there now, and Neo would have to live with it.

"Floor 2, Room 27. I'll give you 1 hour, then I'm fetching you down."

"Thank you, but I doubt we'll be needing that long." Fox started walking as Neo silently thanked him too. They climbed into the elevator and rode it to the second floor, then followed the corridors until they made it to Room 27. "Why are we here? This seems like a very odd and very specific place to look for them." Neo gave the door two knocks before answering his question.

' _I stayed here a couple of nights ago before making my way to Beacon yesterday and I'm pretty sure I saw them, but the situation I was in wouldn't have put me in the best of places with them or with Salem, so I left it. Now, I only have to deal with them, and that I'm pretty sure we can do. They seemed... very off. Very unlike themselves. If what Doctor Watts and Tyrian kept blabbing about back when I was with Salem is true, then at the very least I think we can provide some sort of support. I want to patch things up with them._ ' On cue, there was a voice coming from the other side of the door.

"Who is it?"

' _What do I say to that?_ ' Neo shrugged. ' _Helpful..._ ' - "Just a couple of friends who know what you're going through and want to help." There was a long pause after that and a faint clink of metal behind the door. Neo grabbed Fox's hand and took a step backwards away from the door, out of striking range. The worn wooden door creaked open, revealing a bit of the room inside and a woman standing in the doorway. Not giving them a chance to either be shut out or attacked, Neo teleported both her and Fox inside the room to the place she was just looking at, the unmistakable shatter of her illusion echoing through the corridors. Emerald spun round and saw the backs of the two people who were outside but had now appeared in their little room. Instinctively, she went over to protect Cinder from the assailants, even though the fiery woman was perfectly capable of protecting herself once she had recovered from the slight shock of two people appearing in front of her.

"Who the hell are you and what do you want with..." the thief's words got caught in her mouth as the new pair in the room turned around to reveal themselves. "...Neo?" Knowing that neither of them learned to speak anything past Basic Sign, the mute simple waved "Hello" at them before getting her Scroll out to speak with them.

" _You've got some nerve coming..._ " was all Cinder could strain before the coughs became long, heavy and painful sounding. Emerald rushed to grab her some water as Neo typed out a question to her ex-Boss.

 **What happened to you?**

As the glass of water was being brought over, Cinder shook her head and pointed to Emerald. Neo's eyebrows raised as turned to her ex-colleague and directed the question to her.

"Salem..." was the only word she growled for the moment. Neo shuddered at the mention of her name; it had brought her nothing but pain and misery, and clearly it had done the same to these two as well. "We'd been trying to capture you for her for ages, but when Roman appeared out of the woodwork and took us out before one of our attempts, then caught you on his next, we were thrown out like trash. But not before she took... part of us." Emerald raised the eyepatch covering her eye, revealing a sickly, empty hole where her eyeball used to be. Neo gasped not only at the lack of eye from Emerald, but also at the realisation of what Salem's pendant thing was when she was there.

 **That necklace that Salem was using is your eye isn't it Em?**

"Don't use that name with me!" Naturally, she backed off at that, back into Fox's embrace. "If I recall, you hated being with us and we despised you too; why are you here now, because we don't want your pity!" Cinder tried laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, but she shook it off immediately. "This entire ordeal is because of you. Cinder struggles to speak because we tried to get you, I've lost an eye because we tried to capture you, _Mercury_ is dead because Salem wanted you! And now here you are, standing in front of us while we struggle to survive because of what happened to-"

" _Emerald!_ " Cinder shouted before understandably sending herself into a coughing fit.

"Cinder," Emerald groaned, annoyed at the woman, but not to the point of not caring for her safety, "I told you to stop trying to speak, you'll hurt what little voice you have left if you continue." After a sip of water, she pointed at the established couple in the room, trying to get her point across. "I... ugh, we've gone over this Cinder, communicating is going to be hard from now on. We need to..." the mint haired girl was stopped when a Scroll was handed to Cinder. She turned to see Neo handing her Scroll over, temporarily, so that Cinder could have her say in the conversation. The tattooed woman nodded in appreciation, then gestured for them to speak.

"Emerald, we both know what you're going through." She scoffed at the idea, but all that earned her was a stern look from both Neo and Cinder, so she didn't do it again. "In some ways, both of us and neither of us had it better than the other. I'd never been able to properly see until I was already an adult, and Neo lost her voice completely as a child. You had one eye removed and Cinder's vocals are damaged near beyond repair without proper medical attention, but you won't get any of that; not because you don't want to, but because you know that the second you go anywhere you'll be recognised and locked up, so you look out for her by yourself. Yes, I was completely blind and you only partially blind, yes Cinder can somewhat speak, and Neo is completely mute, but you had yours forcefully taken away. It must have been horrible, but ultimately, we do both know what you're going through." Emerald looked at the floor and said nothing, tears falling from her one good eye, as Cinder typed something out on Neo's Scroll.

 **I still don't understand why you want to come and speak to us. We made you feel unwanted and like a waste of space. Why would you come here?**

After a silence, Fox spoke again. "Neo said that it's because everyone deserves a second chance. She got hers, and is happier now than she ever had been. She said that you two deserve one too, and one where you know there are people who not only understand your pain first-hand, but can share the load of it too." Emerald was silent once again as Cinder typed.

 **I appreciate your concern. Truly, I do. Emerald does to, but won't show it**

The jab at her gave the mint haired girl an excuse to playfully slap her friends arm, earning her not a look of anger, but one of playful teasing.

 **However, as much as I am thankful for your concern Neo, I would rather you would stay out of our lives as best you can from this moment onwards. We brought this mess on ourselves and we wouldn't want to drag others down with us. We will fight on by ourselves.**

Neo hastily tried typing out a response on Fox's Scroll, but Cinder held her hand up and shook her head. Much calmer than Neo, she typed out her next words.

 **If you want to help us, maybe throw a spare few Lien our way once a month or something, just to either keep us going or to work towards medical treatment to get ourselves new vocal chords and a glass eye or something, just so we don't feel too out of place.**

"Do you mean that?" Fox asked. Cinder simply nodded, then continued onto the next part of the message. Before it was shown to the students, the tattooed woman showed it to Emerald for approval. The nod clearly meant that whatever was on there, they both approved of.

 **We may have had our differences in the past Neo, and by no means does this visit fix everything, or anything major really, but we would say that we can at least part here on level ground once again.**

The ice cream girl nodded, as if to say, "I can get behind that", walked over and stuck out a hand for Cinder to shake. The seductress stuck her hand out almost immediately, but paused halfway. But after some internal thought, she crossed the remaining distance and shook the woman's hand.

" _Doesn't... mean... we're friends..._ " she struggled, but she needed to say it. It felt more genuine if she said it, " _just... not enemies... anymore..._ " Neo smiled then, in a move that startled the previously calm and collected woman in front of her, hugged her tight, scaring a " _Ngh!_ " from her. Emerald went to pry them apart, but Fox caught her shoulder and held her back.

"Neo says that she is genuinely sorry for what Salem has done to you, and that she will do whatever it takes to make you better." He could have sworn he saw Cinder genuinely smile. "She also says she would like her Scroll back." After the hug broke, Cinder handed the device back to Neo who immediately started typing out something on the screen. As she did, Fox spoke to Emerald briefly. "So, was Mercury your...?"

"Friend. He didn't care for relationships and I didn't care for him. We bonded over what we were doing and the fact neither of us cared the other didn't care. It was weird, I'll give him that." She gave a quick sniff before continuing. "I could just talk at him for hours and he'd 'listen', he would do the same to me, it was odd, but it worked. He was the only one I could really do that with, until we ended up in this situation. Cinder's the only person I have now, so I will do my best to protect her."

"You're doing an honourable thing. Listen, I know you might not want to hear this, but Yatsuhashi truly is sorry for killing him. He..."

"That's enough" she snapped almost half-heartedly.

"I'm... sorry to open old wounds. Trust me, I know how much that hurts." The comment caught the dark skinned woman off guard and actually got a small laugh from her.

"It's fine Fox. What I meant was I didn't need any more than his apology; no explanations, no reasons, just the apology. I forgive him, and I will move on." She turned her head and stared at his copper brown eyes with her solitary red one. "Tell him that I forgive him too."

"I shall do. Come on," he opened his arms for a hug, "to put the past behind us." With a shake of the head and a smile, she leaned in and gave him a hug.

"I see why you two make such a great couple - you have a lot of compassion to share."

"Thank you. Listen, if we're going to do what Cinder suggests with the whole 'Occasional Financial Support' thing, we're going to need to know where you are or the details for an account to transfer the money into or something."

"Right. Hey Neo," the mute turned around to look at the other two in the room, "do you still remember the address for that warehouse we did a lot of our heist plans in?" The mute nodded slowly, trying to recall if she did as she was responding. "Good, Cinder and I will make a new account for the pair of us and leave the details somewhere inside of it. That way, you can find it without raising too much suspicion. Sound like a plan?" She nodded, then smiled at Fox.

' _We need to head off, the others will be waiting for us outside._ '

"You're right. Well, we need to shoot; we're heading out on a mission and we made a stop here before we went, just because Neo saw you before and didn't know if you'd be here later."

"Seems only fair. Well then, bye you two." Fox and Neo left the two women and the Hotel and headed back to the Bullhead. Meanwhile, back in the room, Emerald and Cinder were still slightly taken aback by the unexpected visit and how it turned out. "Do you think they mean it, Cinder?" The raven haired woman gave a simple nod as an answer. Neo cared for them. Maybe it had to do with the fact she herself had been subject to Salem's torture, but that didn't stop the fact that she clearly wanted the pair of them to live their lives free from the ashen skinned witch's grasp and free from the pain she caused them both.

* * *

I always see Neo in my story as a person who strives to do what's best for those she cares about. She's also willing to forgive (to a small degree) Cinder's and Emerald's past credence's against her, if only for the fact that she understands their pain.

Next stop, the Resort!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	61. Green Themed Greetings

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The sun was hugging the mountain tops of the West as the aircraft landed at 'The Four Season Springs', the rays bathing the resort in a warm light that made it seem so relaxing and calm. But the looming threat of Grimm nest and the unknown Grimm of the 'Summer Spirit' Spring hurt that mood, at least for Velvet. Coco meanwhile was loving the holiday they were going on.

"Right guys, let's drop our stuff off at our room and then hit the spa, I've been _dying_ for some relaxation after that week on edge."

"Coco," Velvet cried in disgust, "we're here to help solve Grimm problems, not have a holiday. The holiday comes after _when_ we finish the mission _if_ we do it within a certain amount of time, not before."

"I'm just kidding, cottontail. Honestly, you think I'd do something as crazy as that when we've been given such an important mission?"

" _Third Year, Mission 2_ " Neo signed.

"What about it?" she replied, playing the fool.

"You disappeared during the first night and we found you at the local bar the following evening" Yatsuhashi added, equal parts disappointed and infuriated - just as he must have been back then.

"You managed on your own, and I was told to take a much more backseat leadership role in that mission."

"Exactly, 'backseat leadership' Coco, not 'off at the bar getting drunk off my tits'."

"To be fair, I won some Lien for a drinking contest that no one thought I could win, and I wasn't that drunk."

"Okay, Coco," Fox started, clasping his hands together, "whenever someone starts with 'I wasn't that drunk', everyone and their mother knows that the person in question was indeed _that_ drunk. And we were the sober ones, we should know. We had to carry your ass back to our camp all whilst you were shouting random nonsense."

"Pfft, I would never say anything like-"

" _One: 'Rimmy Tim will never be a thing'._ "

"Neo, you weren't there then, how could-"

"Yes she was Coco; Third Year." Coco shrank back slightly at the mistake she'd made as Fox continued where his girlfriend left off. "Two: 'These chickens are trying to chew on my penis'. The fuck is that supposed to mean Coco?"

"No idea."

"Three:" Velvet said, arms folded, "'No one likes the Party Mansion. No one!'"

"No one likes the what?"

"Our thoughts exactly! Face it Coco, you were drunk as fuck and we had just about had YNVF! {Enough}"

"Velvet, sweetie, do you really have to word it like that?"

"Yes," she deadpanned, "yes I did. We do the work, then we enjoy the spa. _If_ we finish the work on time."

"You're becoming more and more like me, I swear. And you've been waiting to use that one, haven't you?" The Rabbit Faunus smirked as she turned to walk to their accommodation for the duration of their stay.

"That's what Mate's Marks will do for you Coco. Now come along, we've got to get set up." She started walking, her belongings in tow, then turned to her girlfriend as she continued. "And yes, I have been wanting to use that one" she smirked again.

The rooms they were given weren't too shabby. By all accounts this was easily the best accommodation they'd ever had when on a mission like this. Each of their rooms had two spacious single beds - closer in size to a double bed, a large en suite bathroom, a small kitchenette, inside seating and, for their rooms at least, a small balcony that opened out onto a view of the mountains to the West past the luscious green forests of South-Eastern Vale. They had been given three rooms due to their team size being slightly larger than what they would normally accommodate in a Huntsman team. They politely declined the third room, stating that four of the five of them were in relationships with one of their teammates, so they would most likely be sharing a bed anyway, something the Ox Faunus at the front desk understood.

"Okay guys," Coco said once all of their stuff was piled into one room, "I say we lay down a few ground rules. One of these rooms is 'The Fun Room', so if any of us want to do anything whilst we're here, make sure you do it when you're in there. Speaking of, Yatsu, do you want this room by default?"

"I won't be needing the other one, so I will be happy with that."

"Great. So, the rest of us will sleep next door by default. That doesn't mean every night can be 'All hands on deck', if you catch my drift, it just means that if one of us wants to have some fun then they can ask the others if they wouldn't mind sleeping in here for the night. Sound good to everyone?" They all nodded in agreement. "Excellent. If we can also always be ready to go by 8:50am, then we can beat most people coming and going for the day and set off without worrying too many people. Naturally, our presence is going to raise some questions, but we don't have to answer them all, remember that. Especially you Neo, I know how much you like to blabber on about everything we do." Neo rolled her eyes and casually flipped Coco off, earning a fake gasp of surprise and horror from the fashionista and hearty laughs from everyone else.

"Well, I'm knackered - yesterday's still not quite got out of my system yet." Fox mentioned, stifling a yawn. "Plus, we want to start tomorrow morning, right?"

" _According to the report, we need to speak with Maron Chive, Head Receptionist._ " Neo signed to everyone, including Fox, who had learnt a lot of Sign since he'd grown accustomed to sight. Sadly, that meant that secret conversations between Neo and everyone else at Fox's expense had to be forfeited to include him. It also meant that Neo didn't have to simultaneously speak in her head and Sign at the same time whenever Fox was in the group, it wasn't as easy to do as people thought. " _I assume we didn't run into her earlier else she would have said something to us, so unless she rocks up at some point this evening, we need to speak with her first tomorrow. Convene in here bright and early tomorrow?_ "

"Sounds good to me hun" Fox said, grinning, before the grin turned into another yawn.

"I say we try and see if we can get some food to see us over until morning; nothing too big before bed though, isn't that right Yatsu?" Velvet smiled at her towering teammate, who smiled back.

"Of course."

"Suit yourselves," came Coco's response as she calmly grabbed her things and eased her way to the door, "but, if you don't mind me, I'm just... going to... goandgetthebestbedintheroomformeandVelvet, bye!" With that, the leader ran off to do as she set out to do.

' _Oh no you don't!_ ' Neo thought with a playfully evil grin, teleporting to the hallway just past the door, then down towards Coco, who had already gotten a decent head start despite the mass of luggage she was carrying.

"Hold on Ni!" Fox shouted to his girlfriend, starting to run and catch up to her to aid in their attempt to secure the comfier bed, but he was halted by someone grabbing hold of his legs and stopping his movements, throwing him to the floor. After a groan of pain from the impact, Velvet kissed him on the cheek and ran off to aid _her_ girlfriend in the battle for the bed.

"Sorry Fox, love you really" she rushed, zooming out of the door.

"You traitor Velvet, I thought we were friends."

"'All is fair in Love and War' Fox," his partner mentioned from behind him, "'All is fair'."

"Not now Yatsu! I have a battle to win." With that, he pushed himself up and followed everyone else to fight for the best bed in the room. Yatsuhashi just sighed, turning to sit on his bed for their stay. He sat down and bounced a couple of times, testing the springs. It was a really comfy bed, he guaranteed himself that they'd be struggling to find the comfier one amongst themselves in the ensuing chaos. But before he made himself too comfy on this bed he paused, then went over to the other bed and did the same thing as before. He sat on it and bounced a couple of times to test the springs. The giant man grinned to himself.

This one was much comfier, so this would be his.

* * *

Naturally, Yatsuhashi was the first one up today. He always was with these sorts of things. Every time he was set up in an unfamiliar bed, he always woke up early - no matter how amazing it was to sleep in. He never knew why, it just happened, and today was no different. He got up and made himself a drink - his usual; black coffee, one sugar - as he went to go watch the sun rise over the horizon from the communal seating area. He looked a little out of place, what with his baggy white t-shirt and olive green shorts compared to everyone else who was here's white gowns, but they physically did not stock anything meant to accommodate a 7ft tall tank of a man, who just so happened to be a Huntsman-in-Training. He made do with what he had.

Taking his usual position of 'at the back, out of everyone's line of sight', the swordsman gazed out towards the East, hoping to catch the first rays of light of the new day. Almost as a reflex, he sat down and started meditating, opting to do it today with his eyes open. It introduced an element of risk, giving you more chances to be distracted and having your concentration broken. Yatsuhashi loved challenges. He sat on the chair for a good 20 minutes, enjoying the serenity of the moment when someone sat down next to him. He thought it would be one of his teammates, but instead he spotted someone else, someone he'd honestly never seen before.

"Beautiful morning, isn't it?" Yatsuhashi quietly hummed to himself in agreement. The woman next to him looked fairly young, not much older than himself, with a head of pear green hair in a bob. Her eyes, even in the pre-sun light, almost shone with a neon green light in the darkness, though the natural green of her eyes won over whenever the artificial light did hit her face. It was sparse, as the staff obviously knew why people were here at this ungodly hour. "I always come here in the mornings to watch the sun rise. At this time of year, the skyline almost glows in an eerie light that honestly fascinates me." Yatsuhashi found himself smiling. The way the woman spoke with such enthusiasm about something so simple as the sunrise, it reminded him of how Ruby acted a lot of the time he saw her getting excited about something she was really into.

"So, do you come here often then?" he asked with genuine curiosity, "you seem to know a lot about the sunrise I only assume that was the case."

"You'd be correct!" she giggled infectiously. The tank found himself letting out a small laugh himself.

' _Very much like Ruby..._ '

"My family came here back when it was a smaller and more intimate business than it is now, back when I was a stroppy and ungrateful teenager. They stopped after the third time, but I've been coming ever since..." He caught sadness in her voice when she said that, almost like she missed the days when she was younger. "I miss them..."

"What happened, if you don't mind me asking?"

"No, it's fine. There's no point on dwelling - I find that the moments leading up to dawn are the best times for confessions; when the sun rises above the horizon, the new day has started and all things you said before are burnt away in the morning light."

"That is a very unique but interesting way of looking at it."

"Aww, thank you!" Even her smile was infectious, as he found himself grinning back at her. "But yeah, they're not dead. It's just... they seemed off after they came back..." his smile dropped as hers did, the story sounding eerily familiar.

"Came back from where?"

"One of the Springs along here." It had to be this mysterious Grimm they were after, it lined up all too well for it _not_ to be. "They went there without me - because you know, 'Stroppy Teenager Syndrome' hit hard that morning." Even with a situation like this, she was still cracking small jokes. Yatsuhashi was fascinated. "But when they came back they weren't the same as they were when they left. They were... I'm not sure how to-"

"They were slower, looked rather pale, didn't quite seem right for a while."

"Yeah..." the pear haired woman said, confused look on her face, "exactly that. How would you know that?"

"Because we've had a case of that too." Her green eyes lit up, and this time they honestly looked like they started to glow.

"Really?! Oh, that's wonderful! I mean... it's not, but it's good to know that it isn't an isolated incident." She slumped back in the chair. "Ah, and I thought it was just me." She sat back up again quickly after, shocking the gentle giant. "Wait, 'we'? Who's 'we'?"

"Beacon Academy. I'm a Huntsman-in-Training and one of our teams - friends of mine a couple of years below me - came here for a week, but something happened to them and they returned to the Academy late with the exact symptoms I described to you."

"You're a Huntsman? Oh, that is so cool!" She clearly didn't care much at the moment for the parallels between her parents and Team HLQN (not that she'd have known that was their name anyway), she was more caught up in the fact he was a Trainee Huntsman. This woman's voice was... y'know, in the moments he spent just listening to her speak and looking at her, it never crossed his mind to ask for her name. It only seemed polite.

"My name is Yatsuhashi."

"Pleased to meet you. Honoured, even. I'm Jade. Jade Celadon." She stuck her arm out to shake hands.

"It's very nice to meet you Jade" he replied, closing the gap and shaking her hand firmly.

"Dear Dust, your hands are huge compared to mine!"

"I get that a lot" he mentioned with a shrug.

"So, how far along training are you?"

"I am currently in my final year. This is our first mission as a full team that are more in line with what work we'll be doing outside the Academy in just over a year's time."

"Final year, eh? So, what does that make you, 20? 21?"

"I'm 20, yes." They sat in silence for a handful of seconds, clearly one of them wanting to continue the conversation but the other not getting the hint. In the end, they gave up waiting.

"You're meant to ask me back about my age."

"I didn't want to pry," he admitted, "it didn't feel right."

"Nonsense Yatsuhashi, it's fine. So, are you going to ask me?" He could help but smile again, she was so bright and cheerful and honestly, he felt content sitting here speaking to Jade for a while, she had that air to her.

"I shall. And, Yatsu is fine."

"Yatsu..." she let the word sink in a bit, "I like it."

"So, Jade. How old are you?"

"Don't you know it's rude to ask a woman's age?!" she snapped back harshly, but not with a raised voice. He was unsure of what to do at this point, so he stared. Her expression changed instantly, and she began laughing. "I'm just messing with you Yatsu. I recently turned 23."

"Right. And you're not a Huntress, are you? I assume not, taking your reaction to me telling you into consideration."

"Oh, no. No, I'm an average woman, working an average job."

"I will tell you now that you most certainly are not an average woman, Jade." Even in the dim, not-yet-morning light, Yatsuhashi was pretty sure he saw her start to blush. At that sight, he felt his cheeks warm too. ' _Am I flirting with her? Dear Oum, I think I am. That's not right..._ '

"Yatsuhashi, are you flirting with me?" she asked, resting a hand on her heart and putting on an over the top shocked face. "We've just met."

' _Well, she seems to think so too._ ' - "I must be truthful with you, it is not my intention to be. May I ask, have you ever had any training with regards to Aura?"

"No, I haven't," she answered, looking away from him slightly, almost in shame, "I know I have one, if that's what your next point was going to be - everyone does - but I don't want it unlocked. My parents told me I shouldn't, because when I do then 'I must become a Huntress', even if I don't want to." Following his instincts, he reached across the gap again and placed his hand atop hers for comfort.

"There is no such rule stating that. You can have your Aura unlocked properly and use it to help in your day to day life, but there are no explicit rules stating that you must become a Huntress once you have. You are already too old to start learning how to, by now your body would have missed the peak opportunity to train and it would have started physically weakening and letting your Aura become more settled. To try and coax it into doing strenuous training wouldn't do it or you any good. I'm sorry if you wanted to explore that route."

"No, it's fine, honestly. The idea of pursuing that career never really thrilled me anyway, but the thought of seeing them was fascinating." Yatsuhashi moved his hand away at an opportune moment, feeling that he hand comforted enough. But as they sat there for a few moments in their silence, a thought crept into his mind.

"Jade?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you like me to unlock your Aura for you? I sense there's some-"

"Yes!" she beamed, jumping from her chair and grabbing his closest hand with both of hers.

"R-really?"

"I have wanted this for a long time," she confirmed, "like, a _really_ long time. I know my parents had said no, but if I now know there's no obligation to become a Huntress, then I would like to have my Aura unlocked."

"Okay then. I think you have a semblance that is quite unique in some ways, but I will need your Aura unlocked so that it is easier for me to read." She grinned excitedly.

"Awesome! Where'd you want me?"

"There will be fine. We will need to stand up." She did so and he followed, and in that moment they both realised how silly this looked - a 7ft tall man trying his best to unlock the Aura of a 5' 5" woman. But, he persisted. "I merely need to hold my hand over your forehead and heart, so this is not me advancing on you in any way." The green themed woman chuckled at the thought.

"It's fine, I know what you're doing. Though I must admit, I wouldn't have minded if you'd just started touching anyway." The gentle giant felt his face heating up something fierce at the comment, his blush probably shining brighter than their Auras were about to. Jade clearly found that hilarious, as she started laughing at the sight. "You can't unlock Aura, can you?" she joked, "you were just using this as an excuse to touch me up. I must admit, this is a first, so I'll entertain it."

"Jade, I need to focus. As do you, unless you want your body to explode from your Aura being unlocked and the vessel not being ready to contain it." She promptly quietened down. He didn't like lying, but sometimes it was the only way. After a couple of attempts to focus his mind, he found the right place and began speaking once more.

" _For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee._ " During the incantation, Yatsuhashi's body glowed in the olive green light of his Aura and, when starting to unlock, Jade's body glowed in a colour closely resembling her namesake. Afterwards, he stood back to collect himself; unlocking someone else's Aura like that takes a fair amount from you. Jade saw her glow and couldn't stop smiling.

"This feels so amazing..." she whispered to herself, awestruck with the new sensation.

"Your Aura can act like a shield, it can speed up healing when used properly and it acts like a back-up energy storage. If you feel low on energy, you can dive into your Aura reserve if you haven't already."

"Awesome..." she uttered as her glow faded, her smile fading as it did. "Aww..."

"It hasn't gone, don't worry. To have your Aura ever glowing around you all the time would be an annoyance - especially on stealth missions - but also it drains it much faster than any other method known, save energy draining semblances. Speaking of, your-" A single finger rested on his mouth, halting his speech dead in its tracks.

"Shh shh! Look, sunrise!" At her direction, the boy looked out of the East facing window of the resort and watched the sun rising over the horizon. True to her word, the moment it broke the horizon, the lower portion of the sky was swamped in an almost ethereal purple light, flickering like fire before dissolving into space. He had never seen anything like it before, and doubted that - unless he came back here again in the future - he ever will see it again. In his trance, he almost didn't register the soft, warm kiss placed on his cheek. In an instant, he came back to reality to see what that was, only to spot a shy looking Jade beside him at his eye level, a place she definitely wasn't a minute ago. The reason for that, as he discovered when he stole a glance down, was that she was now standing on the chair. The sight honestly brought a smile to his face, something that clearly eased her mind as well. "Sorry..."

"For what?"

"Well... um..." her blush grew quite significantly on his question, "I... I consider the Purple Sunrise, as I've dubbed it, my lucky charm. Every time I come here, I make a wish; kind of like Birthday candles. This year, as you were here, I thought I'd try something different because I... kind of... like you?" Somehow, she found herself question her own confession, wondering if what she was saying was right.

"I have to say, I am no first-hand expert on this. I share a room with two couples, both of whom have been dating for over a year, but other than that. I believe myself to be aromantic, but that does not mean I am opposed to a relationship, if that is what you were looking for."

"Sort of..." she said, scratching the back of her head, "I mean, I've never had a real relationship before and I thought I'd give it a shot with you, considering you're one of the first people to hold a decent conversation with me for a long time."

"Really? That is such a shame, they don't know what they're missing."

"You _are_ trying to flirt with me!" With a playful smack on his chest that did literally nothing to make him flinch, she started grinning again. "Wait, you were going to say something before sunrise, weren't you? Sorry, I cut you off."

"Hmm? Oh, your semblance. See, judging based on you, I'd assume that it is a passive one - something that's rather rare amongst people and Faunus, but more common than most people would believe. I think your semblance amplifies your own emotional energy to the point where that energy created is projected outwards from yourself, even if you don't feel massively different. It's why I personally feel happier sitting and standing with you." Her face lit up with glee and her eyes started glowing, for real this time rather than a trick of the light, with a soft neon green light, and Yatsuhashi felt a wave of happiness wash over him as she smiled. "See?"

Unsure of what he was on about, the woman searched round the surrounding area behind her, but stopped when she heard him start to chuckle. "See what? And why are you laughing?"

"I meant with your Aura and semblance. I felt happier when you were happy. It must be your semblance." She returned to grinning, grabbing his chest and giving it a tight squeeze in delight.

"Thank you! I haven't been this happy in a long time."

"You are most welcome," he replied, "although I do feel the need to say something now before it's too late." Her smile dropped slightly as he continued. "Not only would your positive emotions like happiness and love be amplified and projected outwards, but your negative ones as well - you would essentially be a beacon to any nearby Grimm on a bad day. I can understand your parents' unwillingness to have your Aura unlocked what with your 'Stroppy Teenager Syndrome', but similarly if you knew how to control it then it wouldn't be a problem." Her grin came back to her, along with an idea.

"Teach me."

"Pardon?"

She rolled her eyes and expanded upon her offer. "I would like you to teach me how to control my emotions, make it easier for me to not be a walking Grimm magnet." Pausing briefly to consider the preposition, wondering if it would be a god idea and a practical use of his time. "Plus, it means I can spend more time with you," she added, almost not wanting to add that last comment on there, "if you want to, that is. I know you've probably got Huntsman duties to fulfil and so I don't-"

"Okay."

"Pardon?"

He rolled his eyes and expanded upon his answer. "I will help you control your emotions and your Aura. We can hone your command over your newly acquired skills so that you can better yourself in life. And so that we can spend more time together, because I would really like that." With a smile from the pair of them, Jade reached into her robe pocket and got out her Scroll, unlocked it and handed it to the tank, who proceeded to input his Scroll number on the silent command.

"Well Yatsuhashi, I look forward to seeing you again soon."

"And I you, Jade." In a move he wasn't expecting, she jumped on him and caught him in a hug, hanging from his shoulders. He returned the hug, walked away from the chair she jumped off of and put her down once the hug had passed. With a smile she left, returning to her room most likely.

"I haven't seen her smile like that in a long time" came a new, unfamiliar voice from behind him. As he turned, the woman approached him and continued, "you really are special Mr. Huntsman. I have grown to know Jade very well over the years, she is a sweet girl and someone like you could change her life for the better." This woman looked fairly plain in comparison to Jade's green theme, with one noteworthy exception - her coffee brown hair was in a neat bun, her skin was lightly tanned, she was dressed in charcoal formalwear - jacket and knee length pencil skirt - with a white shirt, matt nude coloured tights and black pumps, yet despite all of this simplicity her eyes were a striking byzantine purple.

"Forgive me, but who may you be?"

"I'm Maron Chive, Head Receptionist. I'm your contact for the duration of your stay."

* * *

Coco's a weird drunk in my eyes. She can hold her liquor, but once she goes, she _goes._ And I've been wanting to use that YNVF line for a long while as well...

More OC's too. Gods, it's like I enjoy making extra challenges for myself.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	62. Summer Plans

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

After his encounter with Jade and his unexpected meeting with Maron, Yatsuhashi grabbed some food the moment the kitchen was opened and headed back to their room to wake them up and get them to go eat. When he entered the room at around about 6:00am, he was surprised, but not too shocked, to see an arrangement most peculiar. During their fight for the comfiest bed in the room, allegiances must have changed (for better or worse, depending on which side of the fight you were on) as it appeared Coco and Neo teamed up, fought off (and won against, Yatsuhashi assumed) their respective romantic partners. So here they were now, Neo and Coco sleeping together in one bed, with Neo surprisingly being the big spoon, and Fox was with Velvet in the other bed, albeit with their backs to one another. Three years ago, Fox would have done anything to get in the position - what with the crush he had on her - but now here they were in the same bed and yet he wasn't trying anything with her. Whilst the irony was not lost on Yatsuhashi, he admired his brother-in-arms' loyalty to his own girlfriend, and the fact that ever since that failed crush, the friendship of those two grew stronger out of it, so technically it was a Win-Win.

Yatsuhashi walked over to Velvet's side of the bed and shook her gently to wake her, knowing she was the one who would be least likely to get annoyed at him for waking them up. "Morning Velvet. We need to get moving." Her rabbit ears had come to a natural resting over her face, so on hearing him speak they moved reluctantly so she could see him.

"Morning..." she creaked like an old oak tree as she rose up to stretch, her sleeping t-shirt riding up slightly. The giant averted his eyes, only to feel his teammate slumping against his chest trying to fall asleep again. To stop this, he simply took a step back, causing her to fall towards the floor, had he not have caught her. "Nooo... why must you betray me?" The Rabbit's ears, now fully expressive, drooped backwards in sadness at her new pillow suddenly moving.

"Because we do need to move. I spoke to Maron this morning, she wants to meet us all in the main reception at 7:45."

"Oh alright" she sighed, fully willing to move but not wanting to sound overenthusiastic this early in the morning.

"Plus, you're the only one out of us who can safely wake Coco up without her killing and prying her from Neo's spoon, the latter of which I will happily help you with." The mage glanced over inquisitively at the other bed to see her girlfriend and the girlfriend of the boy she was in bed with... the boy she was sleeping with... damn, there wasn't really any way she could say this without it sounding like she was cheating... to see her girlfriend and Fox's girlfriend (there we go) spooning one another.

"Be honest with me Yatsu," she started as she slipped herself out of bed and walked towards the gown on her wardrobe door, "were you surprised when you saw that this morning?"

"Only to see that Neo was the big spoon."

"Yeah..." Velvet shuddered as she wrapped the pearly white robe around her body, she felt cool and relaxed just by putting it on. "Dear Oum, this thing is Heavenly to wear."

"It is a shame they didn't have any in my size, I'd look silly walking round in one otherwise."

"Maybe you should have stopped growing!" she teased sticking her tongue out at him. "But yeah, I'm not too surprised at seeing that, but when you put the two Tops in their respective relationships into a bed together and they start spooning, one of them has to be the little spoon by default."

"That is true" he replied with a nod.

"Though I think it's more to do with the fact that Coco is just a big softy at heart."

"I heard that..." the woman in question uttered as she shifted slightly to wake her body from slumber. She glanced backwards at the older but smaller woman behind her, smiling slightly at Neo's eyes fluttering open. "Morning Neo." The ice cream girl grinned and leaned forward for a simple 'Good Morning' peck on the lips, one that the team leader also leaned into.

"I don't know whether to be fuming or aroused right now about seeing my girlfriend kissing another woman in bed."

"Go with 'aroused' please," the fashionista shot back blindingly fast, clearly excited about this topic of conversation coming up, a giant grin on her face the entire time she spoke. "it'll make some nights in here all the more interesting. Oh, the fun the three of us could have."

"I'm still here guys," came from Fox's side of the second bed, clearly having been awake for the entire time, "don't I get a say in that sort of thing?"

' _Not really hun_ ' was all Neo thought. She sat up and unwrapped her arms from her sleeping partner's waist, then started signing so that everyone else could understand their conversation. " _I mean, maybe in the future, but I think we'd all want a 'Girl's Night In', if that's alright._ "

"Neo, you know we've had this conversation, just as we know Coco and Velvet have had this conversation," with one member of each of the relationships being openly Pansexual - Neo for one, Coco for the other - both of them and their partners' collectively agreed after a discussion that they would be in Semi-Open Relationships. To the four of them, it meant that so long as Fox or Velvet okayed it with Neo or Coco respectively, they were fine with them having a little bit of time with someone else, only okaying certain people for anything more. The other pair were obviously at the top of the other list, with Yatsuhashi coming in second should he ever feel the pull of sexual attraction later on in his life. The offer of exploring other partner's extended to the two shyer and not-Pan teammates, but it was most likely not going to be chipped in, something they were all content with, "I am fine with it. Just... don't make it a regular thing, if that's alright?"

" _Of course not Fox, wouldn't dream of it._ "

' _You kind of_ _ **do**_ _dream about it, though._ '

' _Don't rat me out!_ '

"We both know you two aren't massively comfortable with it all," Coco continued, not privy to the little aside the other couple had in their heads, "hence why we went with a Semi-Open Relationships. And we always come to you first, we don't want to worry you both for thinking we're cheating on you."

" _And we do it because we both love you._ " There was a pause in the room as the words sunk in.

"Neo..." Velvet began almost hesitantly, "when you say 'we both love you', do you mean 'both of you are in love with both of us' or 'you each love your partner'?"

" _Yes._ "

"That's not an answer Ni."

" _Yes it is Fox. We both love you both._ "

"Oh... okay then," he replied with finality, "glad that's sorted out."

"Why're you acting so shocked you two?" queried Coco, genuinely in confusion over their reactions, "we've told you enough times that we both find all of you extremely attractive and love you all - with more love going towards our own partners', no questions about that - yet you're sat there like it's new news."

"It's the morning," Fox replied with haste, shooting up to standing as he said so, "we're not awake enough to realise what you said. I'm heading to the breakfast bar."

The gentle giant smiled at his teammate for moving the conversation to a close, "that is an excellent idea Fox. Our contact wishes to speak with us in the main reception at 7:45."

"Well then," the fashionista called out, clapping her hands together, "let's not keep her waiting."

* * *

After all heading down for breakfast together, with Yatsuhashi not eating having already done so, Team CFVYN arrived in the main reception at 7:38am with the plan of waiting for Maron Chive to be there in 7 minutes to meet them. But to everyone's surprise (sans Yatsuhashi, who knew she'd most likely be here because of his earlier encounter with her), they saw her standing there waiting for them.

"Good morning all, nice to see you. Thank you Yatsuhashi for passing on the information to your team; I was actually on the way to have a wakeup call sent to your rooms with the information when I ran into you and Jade this morning; saved us both a fair amount of trouble." Coco's eyebrow raised at that statement, but she kept her thoughts to herself... for now.

"It was no problem, honestly."

"My name, as you can guess, is Maron Chive. I have been in contact with Professor Ozpin ever since that team of his came here and got attacked, so we know each other fairly well from that. I must say, he speaks very highly of the five of you, especially considering your team size."

Fox spoke up. "It all happened so fast, it was a surprise to even us, but we're all happier for it - despite ups and downs."

"Yes, Ozpin mentioned something happened earlier this week that delayed your coming here. I shan't delve any deeper, it is not my place to know that information, but I am glad you are here now nonetheless." With a wave of her hand, she ushered the quintet of students to follow her, a gesture they all followed. "The owner of 'The Four Season Springs' Resort would have been here to greet you herself, but she has recently been taken ill from the very same thing we wanted you to eliminate." The team hadn't heard much of the owner of the resort, save from what they were just told; judging from that she must be quite the hermit. "We'll discuss it more out of earshot of everyone else," the older woman whispered, "I don't want to induce a panic; especially with those Grimm nests so nearby." They all nodded and followed in silence.

Walking past one of the areas, a large salt pool where everyone simply floated and relaxed, Yatsuhashi's gaze drifted to the water. In it (well, technically on it), he spotted the tell-tale pear green hair of Jade. She glanced up and noticed him too. Her infectious smile suddenly appeared the second his brown eyes came into contact with her neon green, and as she waved to him; he smiled and waved back before she lay her head down once more to keep herself afloat.

"Who was that Yatsu?" Coco asked quiet enough so that only the two of them could hear, "was that this 'Jade' girl Maron spoke of earlier?" He opted not to speak - which was a good idea, bass voices carry very far, even when they're whispering - and instead nodded. Coco glanced back at her quickly before continuing to walk besides the swordsman. "You gonna ask her out?" His answer to that was giving his leader a glare. "What? She's a very attractive woman."

"Let me deal with this on my own please Coco," he replied in a voice just above a whisper, "yes I agree, but I want to do things my way. It's different for me than it is for you."

"Fair enough; I won't stand in your way if you want to do something." The corners of his mouth curled up in appreciation as they exited that large room and made their way down a much more business-like corridor. It was a far cry from the area they were just in, heck even their rooms and the corridors between them looked different. This was a plain carpeted corridor with four different plain doors; the first door on the left, the second a bit further down on the right, a third door on the left and then the final one on the far wall. Maron led Team CFVYN through the second door on the left into a small sized business room. It wasn't the sort of thing they'd expected in a resort like this, but then again if there are business clients that wanted to hold meetings whilst having some R&R, it made some sense.

"Sorry for all the secrecy," Maron mentioned as she shut the door behind the last of them, ushering them to one of the seven seats around the table, "but the owner mentioned to me that she really didn't want to raise any unnecessary panic amongst the guests."

"No offence Maron," responded Coco, not wishing to be the bearer of bad news, but being the leader of Team CFVYN, it came with the job description, "but I'm sure they could figure that something was, at the very least, off."

With a sigh, the receptionist nodded in agreement, "yes, having to close access to the 'Summer Spirit' Spring certainly has seen a steady decline in customers and equally a drop has been noticed in the morale amongst not only staff, but those who come here on their breaks; that Spring is by far one of the most popular spots in this Resort, especially considering it's one of the very few places anyone ever sees the owner nowadays."

"Neo and I both have been meaning to ask about her," Fox mentioned, "you keep mentioning the owner by her title, but never by her name."

"That is because it is not something she wishes to share." The students looked among themselves in confusion at the slight oddity of the scenario presented to them. "I know, it is a bit confusing at first, even _I_ questioned it initially, but she promised me that there was a perfectly good reason for her secrecy. When I spoke with her, yesterday being the most recent about you and your role here, she agreed that you can call her what most who know her do, and that is Mrs. S."

"'Mrs. S'? Wow, seems..." Coco was trying to find the best way of wording her reply without it sounding too harsh or mean – this _was_ technically their first employer as Huntsmen-in-Training, "...pretty set on keeping her identity hidden asking us to call her that."

"I agree, but consider yourselves lucky for even getting to this level of acquaintance with her. She mentioned to me yesterday that she knows Ozpin from before now and as such was happy to let you all refer to her as I do. She trusted him to send not only a competent team, but a strong and trustworthy one as well."

"It is nice to know our headmaster appreciates us" Yatsuhashi commented to his four friends before focussing back on Maron. "Now, the reason you brought us all here."

"Yes, of course." Maron pulled out a Scroll Tablet and placed in on the table in front of them all, pulling up what appeared to be a giant map of the Resort and the surrounding area.

"Is this our mission zone?" the Rabbit asked with an air of worry in the words, especially seeing the size of it compared to the small dot near the middle that she determined was them.

As Coco hugged her girlfriend closer, sending waves of positive emotions through their Marks, Maron spoke again to clarify. "No my dear, it isn't. And I am so sorry, but I have not asked for all your names. I know your name Yatsuhashi, you are?"

"My name is Fox, and this here is Neo." On cue, the mute waved. "She's mute, so unless you know any Sign, he thoughts will most likely be communicated via me – though in the interests of time I won't explain how that's possible."

"That is fair enough Fox, I understand. I do know some very basic Sign, but not enough to communicate with someone as proficient as you all must be."

"My name is Velvet." Maron nodded and smiled at her.

"And I'm Coco Adel, Team Leader."

"Thank you all. Now, to answer your question again Velvet, this isn't your mission zone – it's just a general map of the surrounding area," with a quick movement, she zoomed in on the map to a much smaller area, "this will be. It covers everywhere about 2.5km outside of the Resort grounds. In this area alone, we counted no less than 5 Grimm nests, all of which are marked on here. And don't worry, we'll sync up your Scrolls to this once we've finished the brief, so you can do all your planning on here."

"Thank you," Fox sighed in relief, "you have no idea how hard is used to be trying to get everyone's plans to line up perfectly with one another's."

"Hey, I tried to do the best with what I had Fox! Cut me some slack."

"Oh alright, fine. But only because I know you could kick my ass if you tried."

"Flattery will get you everywhere with me Fox."

"Eve-"

' _Don't you dare finish that thought_ ' Neo shot at him before he had a real chance to speak. His mouth clamped shut instantly. ' _Or at least wait until I've finished having that thought first._ '

' _You're the worst, did you know that?_ ' All Neo responded with was a sly smile and a swap of her eye colours. She knew, and she relished it.

"On top of the nests," the purple eyed receptionist continued, "there is a mysterious Grimm in the aforementioned 'Summer Spirit' Spring. That needs not only eliminating, but also the victims of its attacks that haven't been discovered need to be relocated. Most have been, but there are a few who have not." The team nodded, surveying the land and coming up with their own individual mini-plans that they would all pool together to create the final plan, now that they had their information. "As you are all probably aware, you each get a Pass for the Resort so you can let yourselves in an out of anywhere you need whenever you need – even after hours. I, and Mrs. S, wish for you to not abuse this privilege, but to use it wisely. Someone will provide you with them once you head back to the main reception." A couple of them nodded whilst the remaining three continued going through their own mini-plan.

"Right guys, what's your ideas?" Coco started by pointing to Yatsuhashi, being one of the two to finish his mini-plan.

"So, there are five known nests scattered around the area, with at least one of them being an Alpha nest. All five of these nests are situated well within the 2.5km area around the resort, so from here it would take no more than 45 minutes of solid walking to get to any of them. We can very easily do an entire sweep of them in a day, perhaps even taking the smaller nests whilst we are at it. That gives us enough time between our sweep today – if we do it today – and tomorrow morning to come up with a plan of attack for the Alpha nests. As for the 'Summer Spirit' Spring Grimm, depending on where the Spring is influences what I suggest."

"Okay, thanks. Velvs, what do you think?"

"Honestly, my plan was near enough identical; although I would have tried to eliminate all the nests as we came across them and only the ones who weren't exhausted after a few could scout ahead for the other ones, then we return tomorrow and finish off the job." The Faunus fidgeted ever so slightly before she finished speaking. "To be truthful, I prefer Yatsuhashi's method better than my own."

"Velvet, sweetie, it's fine. These are just ideas. Once we have enough, then we focus them onto a full plan. Until then, they're all up in the air. And before you say anything about the idea being silly, yours was nearly identical to Yatsuhashi's, so it can't be that bad if multiple people are thinking along the same lines." Her attention shifted to the other male in the room. "What was your idea Fox?"

"The exact opposite of Yatsu's and Velvet's," he admitted with a slight giggle, "in basically every way. I believed that we ought to go after the Springs Grimm first, as it is an unknown and could take up a lot of our time, then nearer the end spent the winddown period from there to take out the nests. It was a bad idea, I know, and you all know I don't have the best creative mind on Remnant, so plans are hard for me."

"Fox," Yatsuhashi said softly, resting a hand on his brother-in-arms' shoulder, "we do not fret over the fact, so you should not either."

"Yatsu's right Fox," added the mage, her rabbit ears perking up slightly, "you and I have come a long way from the people we were when we walked off that jet on the first day. The fact you always try to come up with a plan is a testament to how well Coco's been doing at leading us all." Coco smiled at her girlfriend, a faint blush gracing her cheeks.

"Flattery will get you everywhere with me Velvs." Unlike when she said it two minutes prior with Fox, where that was more of a serious joke, this time it was said with affection and emotion. It was the best she could do, she didn't think Maron would be best pleased to see her and Velvet making out furiously on the floor in the middle of a meeting.

"Coco, Neo said she had something a bit different, if you'd like to hear it."

"Sure thing," all attention was now on the oldest yet shortest member of Team CFVYN, "fire away Neo."

" _First thing though, where's 'Summer Spirit'?_ " Coco asked Maron on her behalf and the receptionist highlighted it on the virtual map for them. Neo gave the map another once over before giving her views. " _So, if we head to this nest together and take it out, then from there split into two groups; one going for these two nests and the others taking out these two, then from there we reconvene at the 'Summer Spirit' Spring and go from there._ "

"My idea was very similar Neo," the giant mentioned, "I was going to suggest we started on the far side and sweep back to the Spring as well, but I was thinking we'd do it in a single group."

"Both are good ideas, and I think we have our plan, if everyone's in agreement?"

As hands raised, Maron stood back and watched the whole thing work itself to completion. Ozpin said that these five were good, but she wanted and needed to see it with her own eyes to believe it. The man was not overplaying them one bit, these students of his were phenomenal! The fact they managed to find a method of planning that incorporated everyone in equal measures, even with some of them being seemingly apprehensive of giving ideas now – probably more so initially – and doing so this quickly with _five_ team members rather than four was beyond amazing to her. This team was everything the job needed them to be, Ozpin and his team did a marvellous job at that.

"...Chive? Miss Chive? Maron?" The woman snapped out of her own daydream to the sight of the five adults all staring at her.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"We wanted to know when you'd like us to start, we've finished planning and we're ready to go."

"Really?!" – ' _Wow, these guys really are the best. Juliette would love to see these five._ ' – "Of course, straight away if you can." They didn't even wait before nodding and heading off back to their rooms to get themselves sorted for the day ahead of them.

"Thank you Maron. We'll get the plan written up in full as fast as we can then give it to you to message off to Ozpin if you need to. Was there anything else you needed from us?" The woman was honestly lost for words at how efficient these Trainees were, it was as if they'd been on the field for years at the top of their game, and these five were still learning. The Huntresses and Huntsmen they'd become would be legendary.

"No, nothing from me. Was there anything you five wanted to know before you headed off?" The students looked at each other and, seeing that no one had anything they wanted to know, Coco turned back.

"Nothing we can think of right now, no."

"I do have one quick question actually," Velvet chimed in before they were dismissed completely, "it's not mission related, but it's to do with the Resort."

"Okay. Velvet was it?" The Rabbit nodded. "Ask away."

"The robes you have here are, quite frankly, amazing. How on Remnant did you make those?" The first response to the question was a hearty laugh from the byzantine eyed woman, but once that had passed she moved onto her second, more appropriate response.

"Ah, well that is a trade secret. Mrs. S. was the one who made all of them, weaving her magic into the cloth to make them as they are. The best way I can describe it is this; they're like Dust Woven items of clothing, but rather than being a single type of Dust, it's almost all of them at once!" She went to the Scroll Tablet and got up a simple photograph of the item in question. "Whenever it is cold, it warms up like Fire Dust cloth would. Warm? A combination of Wind and Ice Dust cool you down without making you too cold. There's many more different things, you'll see. Now, was that all?" They nodded, bid their thanks and goodbyes and headed back to grab their gear.

Once the five were out of earshot and well out of sight, Maron made her way deeper into the Resort to an exclusive wing. After walking through two sets of doors that each required a different passcode to unlock them, she eventually made it to a room not unlike any other room in the Resort, save for the fact that this room had a fair amount of medical equipment in it, and a recently vacated bed for a single woman, who was currently staring out of the one-way glass onto the Resort. She looked to be in her early twenties, much younger looking than Maron's 51.

"I trust you are well, seeing as you are up and about?" The younger woman turned to the receptionist and stared at her, eyes of tangerine orange and her cornsilk yellow hair shimmering as she did, not completely because of the sunlight coming in through the glass or the lighting in the room.

"I simply needed to get up and walk around, being cooped up in that bed makes me feel uncomfortable."

"But you need to stay there until this thing goes away" Maron reminded her. The woman sighed, reluctantly pacing her way back to the bed.

"I trust that Ozpin has sent us a team to help?"

"He has, yes. Team CFVYN, a Fourth Year team of five. Very efficient by the looks of things, I spaced out for about three minutes and in that time, they had the entire plan ready to go."

"That is impressive. I wish I could meet them."

Maron held her arm out as she told her "Well I'm afraid that you can't. Not yet, at least."

"You cannot stop me if you wanted," she gloated, her eyes shimmering ever so slightly more, a result most definitely not from the light outside.

"Juliette Solstice, I may not be your Mother and you may be a Maiden, but that does not mean you are above every rule that is set, and it does not mean you can ignore every precaution set up for you. You've got a huge responsibility in life now, as do I for protecting you, and Ozpin himself has mentioned that you doing this is a huge risk; I don't want to be the one who fails him because of something you do, nor do I imagine you'd want to step out of line and defy him. You took this on yourself, you volunteered your life and solitude is the price you had to pay – I get it, it's hard. But if that thing's out there and it has enough sense to realise that it had a taste of Summer Maiden, who knows what it would do to find you? Please, for everyone's safety, just stay here." Juliette glared at her like a petulant girl, wanting nothing more than to disobey the woman's orders, but decided against it for everyone's safety and sanity. She slinked back into bed with a huff.

"Part of me regrets this," she admitted, staring at no particular spot on the ceiling, "part wishes that I hadn't jumped down the rabbit hole. It painted a target on my back for the rest of my life, and at the time I only saw the power I would get, not the responsibility I had to burden."

"Juliette dear," Maron cooed, sitting down on the bed next to her, "there is so much more to this world than what you had originally been told, I can tell. You _could_ travel, but you would have to do so alone. Staying here, you have companionship – however fleeting it may be some days – and something to keep you preoccupied. There is a huge weight on your shoulders–"

"You're not helping Maron…" the Maiden muttered.

"–but there are those who will help guide you through it all."

"...I take it back," she uttered after a silence, "you are helping, like, a lot. Thank you."

"Not a problem, my sunshine. Now rest while you recover, it will make it pass a little faster." Maron rose and went to leave the room, but remembered something from her conversation first thing this morning. "Actually, I may have something for you to do, if you're interested in doing something different." At once, the cornsilk Maiden's spirit was raised and the receptionist grinned at the sight.

* * *

I know in canon the Maidens were far more of a secret than what I have here in this AU, but at the end of the day, it's _my AU,_ and I do with it as I like *insert generic evil laugh here*

Plus, we get to finally see Team CFVYN planning, and how Coco integrated everyone into the planning process. She's so nice like that.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	63. The Flames of Battle Rage On

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

True to their word, Team CFVYN sent a mission plan to Maron before they headed out on their mission for the day; basic information such as where people would be and at roughly what time, estimated time of completion, contact information if they needed to be contacted were on there as well. On their way out, the team passed by Jade who was just walking from the salt pool room to the sauna area.

"Hey Yatsu!" That immediately caught everyone's attention, he only ever let people call him that if he was on good terms with them. They had been here for less than 12 hours, so clearly this girl had something special about her. On hearing his name, the giant turned and smiled at her.

"Hello again Jade."

"Oh, so are these your teammates?" she queried, looking past him to the four people he stood with.

With a proud look on his face, one that was rather rare for him to wear, he nodded and indicated to everyone as he spoke of them. "They are. This is Velvet Scarlatina, Orchid Russet - she prefers to be called Neo, Fox Alistair and our leader Coco Adel."

"Wait, Adel? As in-"

"The very same" the fashionista interrupted, knowing full well where the woman's mind was taking her, having been on the receiving end of that question more times than she drank coffee, and she drank _a lot_ of coffee. "Nice to meet you Jade; what little Yatsu has told me of you has been nothing but positive." The beret toting woman swore she saw Jade's eyes shine as she said that to her, but Coco definitely noticed the blush coming across her face.

"Really? Aww, that's so sweet, thank you Yatsu!"

"It was nothing, really."

Coco spotted the blush growing on him as well. ' _Oh, I am going to have so much fun teasing him about this_ ' she thought to herself, trying her hardest to hide the evil smirk that threatened to adorn her face. All was not wasted though, as Inner Coco was already cackling away at the thought.

"So, where are you five heading now?" Fox started to explain how they couldn't afford to be telling people that sort of information for fear of raising a panic before she continued her original train of thought, her mood less cheery than it was when she asked her first question. "Is it to go and fight that Grimm up at the 'Summer Spirit' Spring?" Fox stopped speaking instantly, not knowing what to say or do - no one other than the five of them, Maron and Beacon Staff, and potentially this Mrs. S, should know about that. Despite them being teammates, Fox couldn't stop himself from shooting the back of Yatsuhashi's head a dirty look as the 7ft swordsman stepped towards this new woman amongst them.

"Jade," he said, resting his hands on both of her shoulders, "I need you to stay positive for me, okay? Remember what I said earlier, about how your emotions can latch on to other people?" She nodded. "This would be a bad time for that to happen. Where were you heading?"

Despite her downcast attitude at present, she answered him with a simple "Sauna."

"Then head there, spend as much time as you need relaxing and letting all your negative emotions be steamed away, alright?" She nodded again, trying her best to brighten her own mood. To help her, the giant wrapped her in a tight yet gentle hug. "How about I do my first bit of training with you quickly before you head in?" At that, she instantly perked up a bit.

"Sure, what have you got in mind?"

"Well," he said, raising himself back to full height, "it's a simple thing in principle, but may take a little time to master, so don't worry if you can't do it now." He turned quickly to his remaining four teammates with an apologetic look on his face. "You four go on ahead, I'll be here for a little bit. It's just some simple mind-calming and Aura suppressing techniques." Three of the four nodded and continued on their path out of the Resort, with Coco playfully smacking his bum on the way past. Neo remained where she was, her head cocked to one side slightly. She stared at Jade, unnerving the pear haired woman. Eventually, she smiled and walked on to catch up with the rest of them, signing a quick " _Behave yourself Yatsuhashi_ " before passing completely.

"What did she say?"

He had to lie to her to save her embarrassment, so he settled on, "'Don't take too long'. Now, the way I calm my mind is I picture a scene I want to see, preferably a scene you can imagine without any people in it, but one that still holds positive thoughts and memories with you." Jade nodded in affirmation as Yatsuhashi continued. "For me, it's the gardens back in my home town. There is an area there where there was nothing but white flowers there when I was a kid. They were so beautiful to look at. Now, what will-"

"The Purple Sunrise..." she uttered, her eyes drifting shut without request. That was good for him, it meant that she didn't see the giant grin growing on his face.

"Good, okay. Now, picture a single frame of that scene, just one moment from the Purple Sunrise that you can focus on." After a second or two, she nodded again. "Good. Now, focus on the feeling you are getting from reliving that moment, but slowly try to fade the image away to black. Fade the image, keep the feelings."

"You weren't kidding when you said it's difficult to master" she mentioned, opening one eye quickly to gaze at him as she spoke, a move that caught him off guard as she saw the grin on his face that brought up an equally large smile on her own face.

"Just focus on the scene." With her eye re-shutting, she went back to her task. 4 minutes in, her breathing had slowed to a steady rate and she looked calm. With great care, he placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke softly to her - well, as soft as a bass could when they're speaking right in your ear. "Alright, come on back now Jade. Focus on my voice and come back to the land of the living." Her eyes fluttered open as if she had just woken up, but the second she realised she was back she was jumping on to him and catching him in a surprise hug around his neck, one he returned after the initial shock of her attack wore off.

"That was great Yatsu!" she cried, untangling her arms from around his neck, "thank you so much for teaching me that."

"I am more than happy to help you with that sort of thing. Now, to suppress your Aura, you need to do the same sort of thing, but instead of a memory you have to focus on your Aura itself."

"Okay, sounds easy enough."

"It kind of is."

"I hope you're not making things too easy for me," she replied, giving him a quick nudge and placing her hands on her hips in irritation, though the smirk on her face suggested that this was in no way a threat.

"Of course not, some people don't get taught about that sort of thing until they enrol into an Academy like Beacon or Atlas, and yet you're being taught on Day 1."

"Good." Her body language suddenly started reading nervous, like she wanted to say something but was slightly embarrassed to say it.

"Jade, is something wrong?" Her eyes darted up to meet his for but a second before returning to stare at the ground.

"Do you want to know what moment I thought about with my Purple Sunrise?" Part of him wanted to speak, but the other half won over and he remained silent, simply nodding as an indication for her to continue. "It was... when I ki... kissed your cheek this morning..." On that, her face lit up like a traffic light, her entire neck stained red from admitting that.

"Why are you embarrassed about that?" Jade looked up at the man opposite her, equal parts confused, relieved and shocked at his response. "There was nothing wrong with that, it is a good memory to remember and use as an anchor for your mind calming." She slumped ever so slightly at the second response; to her, it felt like he had missed the reason for her blush. "Besides, I liked it too." Never mind, he hadn't missed it.

"Really?" she shot back almost too eagerly. He didn't mind, it gave him a little chuckle as she clamped her hands over her mouth.

"Really. And you've made this next part easier for me." With a raised eyebrow from her, he elaborated. "Would you like to meet up tonight and we can go have dinner here together?" The wait between the question and the answer dragged on. And on. And on. An-

"Yes!" she shouted, jumping at him again. This time, he was ready and he caught her mid-jump, spinning her around a couple of times as she laughed in an almost childish manner. "Of course I will." Her mood dropped slightly as she considered that he didn't come here alone. "What about your team, won't they mind?"

"Relax, I spoke to Coco about it earlier, she knows and therefore will explain it forward." The smile on their faces didn't go as they hugged each other once more.

* * *

"So, how'd it go?" Coco asked when her towering teammate arrived just outside the Resort's main grounds. "Do you have a girlfriend now?"

"Coco, things aren't going to move that fast, don't get your hopes up. And you know I don't do relationships." The fashionista shrugged and continued walking a little bit before he continued speaking. "But if it's alright with you guys, I said I'd meet with her tonight to go for a meal around here." Their leader halted where she was and pivoted on her left heel to stare at him. It wasn't a death stare; in fact, it didn't have any malice behind it at all. It was a stare of acceptance and happiness.

"I'm proud of you Yatsu." She knew that his next words would have been downplaying everything, so she beat him to the punch. "And before you say _anything_ , we are all genuinely proud of you." As FVN nodded with smiles, their leader continued with "you told all of us, Neo admittedly later than the rest, that you didn't really feel anything towards other people as we all do - that is not a bad thing. Everyone is different, and you are no exception to that. The fact that you have found someone that makes you _want_ to meet her for dinner is truly amazing, and we will support you every step of the way." Neo was the first to prove that by teleporting herself across the distance and catching the swordsman in the biggest hug she could manage with her much smaller frame, followed soon after by the arms of Velvet, Fox and Coco hugging him as well.

"We're a team Yatsu," Fox mentioned, "and you are my partner - my brother - and we can and will work through it with you. You did it for us and we can think of no better way to return the favour."

"Thank you all. But can you stay back a bit? I still need to figure this out as much as you do."

" _Sure thing big guy,_ " signed Neo having broken the hug when her boyfriend finished talking, " _anything for our family._ "

"Much appreciated. Now, shall we? I hear there's a Grimm nest not too far from here."

Feeling the need - no thanks to her Mark and some traits spilling into her - to bring the atmosphere up slightly from that mood, Velvet joked with him, asking very blatantly, "where'd you get that info from, Yatsu? Oh, I hope your source is good, else we may be walking into a trap!" Everyone who wasn't wearing a beret and sunglasses in the group looked at her like she had just said the most ridiculous thing on the planet. The one person who was grew starry eyed watching her girlfriend.

"Gods, it's like looking in a mirror..."

"... A mirror-" Velvet purposely prompted Coco, but to avail, so the Rabbit Faunus said it straight, "-that contains a woman more beautiful than any other man or woman you've seen, with the cutest Rabbit ears in the world." After taking the hint like a kick to the gut, Coco agreed with her girlfriend's statement.

"Of course, hunny-bun, that's what I _meant_ to say; but I didn't want to take away from Yatsu's moment in the limelight."

Suddenly realising that she had just been fairly selfish, Velvet's ears drooped and a quick but pained "Sorry!" shot from her lips. The gentle giant approached her and explained how everything is alright, no one had been hurt and that they could all move on. The quintet walked for about 40 minutes, initially starting conversation on Yatsuhashi's 'date' for tonight - though he insisted that it not be called such - but eventually shifting to more pressing matters, like their strategy for taking their target after they found out the very first place they came across was an Alpha nest _surrounded by_ a few, smaller nests.

" _Who even decided that this place would be prime location for a resort?_ " Neo asked, looking over the masses of smoking black horror that prowled in front of them all, " _As fantastic of a team as I know we are, there are more Alphas here than us._ " One of the (all too few) useful lessons that came from Professor Port's lectures was that most teams needed to have odds of at least 4:3 against any Alpha Grimm, 2:1 for higher ranked teams. _Those_ odds were favourable for them, as there were five of them, shifting everything to their own advantage. The odds were currently stacked 5:9 _against_ them, and that was just counting the Alphas; there were pools of darkness that were birthing new Ursa Minors and Creeps and Beowolves left, right and centre around the Alpha area. " _You're plan of attack better be something spectacular, Coco._ "

"Well the first thing I'm going to suggest," the leader whispered, "is for everybody to not panic at any stage - there are more Grimm here than we imagined, but that doesn't mean this is a lost cause. We're Team CFVYN for fuck's sake, we can handle this!" Velvet felt a lot more at ease now - having Coco as a Mate was extremely helpful, positive emotions and feelings could flood her when she felt down, helping immensely in situations like this when she felt a little outclassed. "Now," Coco continued, "next port of call is sussing what the plan of attack is on this Hive, 'cause this sure as hell isn't a nest!" Brown eyes glared at the Giant Grimm nest/Hive past the sunglasses she always wore, a part of her way inside of her silently wishing that she could destroy them with a glare. Sadly, she wasn't one of the lucky ones who could do that; Professor Goodwitch could _technically_ do that - although it worked better on silly ideas of boneheaded students than it did on Grimm - and that Penny girl probably could as well.

"Coco..." her girlfriend said to her, positive emotions of her own now flooding Coco's mind; frustration not only at the size of this thing, but also at the fact that she couldn't shoot lasers from her eyes or something equally as outrageous to catch the attention of a couple of Creatures' flowing steadily around her thoughts. The caramel haired woman took a long breath, calming herself on Velvet's positivity as Yatsuhashi offered his opinions on the piece, the curious Grimm losing interest once again.

"Well, attacking head on would be suicidal, so we'd need to get around the nest bef-"

"Hive, Yatsu. This is a Hive." With a small smirk, Yatsuhashi corrected himself.

"Sorry Coco; we'd need to get around this _Hive_ and attack from multiple fronts. We know your weapon can easily cleave through bog standard Grimm Coco, have you ever tried on an Alpha like this before?"

The team leader shook her head, but admitted that "it's worth a shot. If Velvet and I attacked from opposite sides simultaneously, then we could thin the crowd around the edges. You three then have a shot at destroying the outermost nests and any stragglers before we all converge again and strike at the heart of the Hive." She looked around at her team. "Any objections?" There were none. "Perfect. Neo and Velvet, go." That was all they needed, the team dynamic had become so close that very few words were often said, yet everyone knew exactly what to do. It's what comes with a strong team that does really well on pre-battle communications, everyone knows what they're doing before they set out to do it. The two smaller women gave their respective partners a quick peck for good luck, then linked hands and shattered in front of everyone. Coco shifted her and the two boys' position so that they we in front of a larger horde of Grimm. Her logic was sound, if you're going to wipe them out, why stand in the open well away from everything when you can move next to a large group of them and take them out first?

"Where'd you want us to go Coco?" questioned Fox when Coco had found her position.

After a quick scan of the area, she indicated to the first pool on the floor. "There. Once I've cleared them out, take out that first pool Fox. You know how to, right?"

He nodded, "Fire Dust until the surface of the pool is aflame, then Ice Dust to snuff it out instantly when the time is right." Thank you, Port.

"Good. From there, go to whichever pool is closest and clearest. Yatsu, you alright doing guard duty?"

"It is what I do best."

"Atta boy, big guy! Let's get this started then, shall we?" Coco detached her handbag from herself and unfolded it into its Gatling gun mode. She slowly spun the barrels, listening out for the same sound of the weapon on the far side of the Hive. She heard it roughly 15 seconds later, and when she did a giant grin formed on her face. She spun the barrels faster to their firing speed, and even over her own whirring weapon she made out a second doing the same thing. Two Creeps and an Ursa grew curious and approached the sound of mechanical whirring, only to be greeted by the first few shots fired from the Gatling guns. Those Grimm were decimated instantly, the next few followed soon after that. Once Grimm number 8 fell, others outside of the two destructive cones of death finally caught on to what was happening. Rather than screams of death from the Grimm, it was a battle cry from near the centre; the Alpha of the Alphas, a large Beowolf with a gash down its left side, earned most likely from one of the previous people who'd tried to take it down. The two halves of the team used that battle cry to enact stage two of the plan.

Coco and Velvet trained their weapons more over the pools of darkness that they were near, clearing that area for their melee ranged teammates. Coco's had less Grimm surrounding it, so hers was cleared first. One it was, Fox charged at it, the surface already starting to bubble slightly as a new creature was being created from the nothingness that it was. A Creep that survived both initial onslaught and the subsequent one charged at the dark skinned boy from the side, aiming to keep him away from the pool, but with an Aura augmented boost, Yatsuhashi slammed into the side of it with his shoulder, throwing it far away from his brother. The attack on the Grimm hurt his shoulder, but the swordsman fought through the pain, swinging his weapon at a Beowolf that thought it could try to get behind him.

Fox loaded up a couple of Fire Dust rounds into one of his gauntlets and readied a miniature vial of Ice Dust in his off hand, then when he reached his pool he unloaded those rounds into the tar like puddle. Near enough instantaneously, the darkness erupted into flames, the surface burning away upon connection with the Fire Dust. It would take some time for the flames to get to the right place, so for now Fox needed to fight off what Grimm were there. Fortunately for the student, an approaching Beowolf would certainly tide him over for a minute or two.

' _Fox, you got a light?_ '

Copper brown eyes looked over at Neo, who was almost effortlessly fending off against Creeps and Ursa Minors, but was clearly wanting something from him. It took a second or two (okay, maybe approaching 10...) before her request registered and started to make sense to him. With a smirk, then a prompt kick to the head of a Creep that was trying to attack with his back turned, killing it, Fox fired a few rounds at Neo. Not towards her, _at_ her.

Just as she wanted.

In a movement that almost seemed like a dance, Neo spun her parasol her body, smacking her target once as she did so, then brushed the tip of her weapon into the puddle nearby and let Fox's bullets impact it, setting the tar like substance on her parasol alight. With the materials it was composed of, prolonged exposure to fire would certainly stain the tip a burnt black, but for what she had planned, a little fire wouldn't hurt it. Weapon now on fire, Neo grinned and swung at a pair of attacking Grimm, setting one of the Grimm's fur on fire. Fox saw this and called it out.

"Coco! Time bomb, right by Neo!" The gunner seized her firing for only a minute to spot the time bomb, finding it with ease.

"Nice one Fox! Keep the rest of these Grimm occupied, watch out for your puddle, and get _it_ near the centre. Neo, light yours up, we haven't got all day." The mute nodded and plunged the flaming tip into the puddle, setting it ablaze as well. To extinguish the fire on her parasol, Neo dug the tip into the ground, but rather than remove it instantly she used it as a small yet sturdy pole to use as leverage for a devastating kick to the stomach of an Ursa Major, it's skin already flaking away from its death before it even hit the ground, before yanking it out of the ground and moving on. Fox's attention was now split between two puddles; Neo's one with its regular orange flames, and his own, where the flames had already started shifting in colour to a much deeper red, almost crimson. He readied another vial of Ice Dust, but had to focus on the two Creeps charging at him from his flanks.

Velvet had run out of time on her hard light construct of Coco's weapon, so she entered the fray along with everyone else except her girlfriend. The first Grimm to approach her - the vast majority of them avoiding her when she was firing at the due to the imminent death that would surely follow - was a lone Beowolf, leaping at the mage when it was close enough. Most people may not be fast enough to dodge a leaping Beowolf. Sadly for the monster, a Huntress-in-Training like Velvet, Beowolves are comparatively sluggish to some of their enemies and even teammates. The Rabbit rolled out of the way before the beast had even reached the apex of its jump, and by the time it had landed, Velvet was already flying through the air towards it. Her foot cracked against the head of the Grimm, knocking it to the floor, then to make sure it was staying down she followed that attack up with an axe kick to its neck, shattering the little bit of bony protection this Grimm had there and finishing it off.

 _Pride._

Velvet shot Coco a look, who was still firing away and thinning out the crowd for the rest of them, but she must have briefly watched the Faunus take out that Grimm and shot a feeling of pride her way. Yeah sure, killing standard Beowolves wasn't exactly praiseworthy under normal circumstances, they're essentially cannon fodder in comparison to other, more substantial Grimm like the Ursa or even the Alpha Beowolves, but that didn't stop CFVYN's leader feeling immensely proud of her girlfriend and Mate for doing something as cool as that. Very few things bested the sense of pride she felt from Coco, so Velvet sent a quick kiss the beret wearer's way before jumping to the next targets; a couple of Creeps roaring at Yatsuhashi because they 'had him surrounded'.

The swordsman stared at the Grimm, taking in their numbers and waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. He saw something approaching out of the corner of his eye, so he glanced round to see if it was something coming to attack. Fortunately for him, it was simply Velvet, who had jumped on the back of a Creep and sprung off it to land next to her tank of a teammate.

"How's everything been going for you, Yatsu?" the brunette asked almost casually, a little winded but nothing too detrimental.

The man answered, "Not too bad. I'm a little surrounded at the moment, as you can see, but nothing I can't handle. Why, do you want in?"

"I can't let you have _all_ the fun over here, now can I?"

"If you insist," he replied with a grin. The pair shot outwards at the same time, Yatsuhashi taking large swings that hit many Grimm all at once, whereas Velvet was focussing more on individual Grimm, but shooting between them at a much faster rate than Yatsuhashi ever could. Velvet landed an elbow into the eye socket of a crouching Beowolf, then with the same arm punched a Creep in its jaw. From that, she kicked backwards to catch the Beowolf in the jaw, followed by a second kick to the Beowolf's chest before finally kicking off the flaking corpse and delivering a knee to the Creeps gullet. Unfortunately for her, with the momentum of that knee, she flew right into the swing of another Beowolf waiting right behind it, knocking her away and taking a sizable chunk of her Aura with it. She landed with a skid, but the damage was noticeable to her Aura as she rose from the landing a little sluggish. Yatsuhashi saw that as the perfect opportunity. "Velvet, jump high."

She heard the command and saw him swinging his sword round his body to build momentum, and so she responded with a simple "Right!" Channelling as much Aura as she could manage into her legs, she sprung high into the air. As she did, the giant swung the Greatsword down to the ground, firing Aura through his blade as well, to create a giant shockwave of energy that radiated across the floor out around him. The sheer power of the blast killed a couple of the weaker Grimm caught in it, severely injuring most others who were a little sturdier. The burning Grimm was hit too, its fur now burning with a deep crimson similar to what Fox and Neo's puddles were moments ago, though no real damage was done to it, it was simple knocked off balance a bit. The two pools of darkness were now burning with a dark raspberry flame; their colours were shifting faster than that of the Grimm due to the inactivity of the puddle compared to the constant moving and attacking of the creature.

Fox hacked his way through an Ursa or two before an immense roar came from his right. His head shot round to the source of the sound, only to be greeted with a claw already coming down to his position.

"Shit!" Jumping backwards was about all he could do to stop himself getting crushed and/or sliced up by the Alpha Beowolf's claws. He came to a halt right by Coco, who was still firing away every now and again to keep the crowd thin for her team. "Little help here Coco?" Brown eyes shifted their focus to her teammate behind her and the Alpha Beowolf standing not too far from him, towering over them all and growling at them like they were _its_ prey.

How wrong it was.

Coco relented on the supressing fire, folding her weapon back into its more compact form. "Fox, give your girlfriend a vial of Ice Dust and tell her to stay by her puddle. You do the same; at the very least we need the puddles gone, else this'll end up as a losing battle." Nodding once in affirmation, he ran off towards his girlfriend, who was currently facing off against two large Ursa and a handful of Creeps, as Coco strutted towards the Alpha, left hand in a pocket and right firmly gripping her weapon. Beowolves, despite being the slime of the Grimm, still appeared intimidating at 7'4". This Alpha dwarfed that, towering over everyone here except for one of its brethren, at approaching 9ft tall. But this was Coco Adel, this wasn't the sort of thing that fazed her. "You know, I thought you'd be tougher up close" she mocked, a deep growl coming from the beast to indicate that it somewhat understood her. Coco lowered her sunglasses to stare at it with a sly smirk. "Guess I was wrong."

A roar broke her smirk and she was immediately on the defensive; the roar didn't come from an Alpha, instead it came from an Ursa clawing at her from her left, followed by another handful of Creeps - there were more of them than the team ever thought they'd seen in one place before. The gunner jumped back, opening some space between her and the mass of darkness approaching, shooting the Alpha a look that said, 'Look got lucky this time'. She wouldn't have enough time to get her Gatling gun out and attack from afar, so she had to rely on close quarters combat. ' _Great..._ ' she thought as she landed, readying herself for a fight she'd rather not have to do like this.

Meanwhile, Neo was gaily darting between all the targets she had at the moment. She knew that she could take them all on with ease, what she was doing now was stalling, waiting for her puddle to get to the right colour of flame before snuffing it out and stopping any more Grimm spawning. An important lesson they were taught in Third Year Grimm Studies was that there are pools of dark energy that spawn Grimm. Whilst uncommon, they must be destroyed immediately. The method of doing so was relatively simple: light it on fire with a reliable source of flame - i.e., Fire Dust - pay close attention to it as the flame colour shifts from the normal orange to crimsons, purples and deep blues until it reaches an azure blue colour, then cover the entire puddle with Ice Dust as fast as possible once it reaches that colour, snuffing out the fire but also doing something unknown to basically everybody that renders the pool inert and essentially destroys it.

They needed to make sure they did this right, covering it only when the flame burned azure blue, or colours close to that, and Professors Gale and Port gave a very decent demonstration as to why. They both took their respective Third Year classes out to one of the many fields around Beacon during the time their classes coincided with one another stating that they "needed the open space for this demonstration". Professor Goodwitch had come along as well, so it was quite a big deal apparently. Professor Port let out a small Boarbatusk from a cage, but it was still tethered down so it couldn't move. Professor Gale then set a small clump of its black skin alight with some Fire Dust, then used some Time Dust very sparingly to speed up the process. The flame burned through the colours it needed, reaching azure blue in two and a half minutes thanks to the time dilation. As he often did, Professor Port stated very matter of factly that "whilst unknown to most people, Grimm are surprisingly flammable. You can use this sort of method to eliminate the pest, but do so at your own risk for as you see..." the flames had passed azure and were now glowing with an aquamarine colour. They had also grown in intensity as well, the small patch of flame spreading over the body in a way it never did before. The creature struggled against its restraints, only realising now that it was on fire, but to no avail. Once the flames had encompassed its entire body, it let out a final roar before there was a rumble felt by the students coming from the Boarbatusk. After a couple of seconds, the Grimm exploded with the force of a small bomb. "...Grimm do explode if left burning for long, and it causes quite a blast. This was but a small pup, yet it could easily wipe someone's Aura out. Imagine what would happen if you used this on something more substantial. The puddles can explode as well, spreading their content everywhere and creating more work for you all. It is in your best interests for that not to happen."

It was a fair assumption to say that the lesson was easily the combined most terrifying and intriguing lesson they had ever been part of at Beacon. And it was also one of only two times anyone from Team CFVYN had seen Professor Gale out of her bunker. Sorry, classroom.

Neo was so caught up in toying with a couple of Beowolves that she didn't see or hear the Ursa Major coming up behind her ready to crush her. She was quite fortunate that Fox was coming to give her something, else there would have most likely been a Neapolitan coloured pancake on the grass. The copper haired boy dove into the back of the creature, his blades on his gauntlets extended out and driving straight into the Alpha beast, and he rode it down to the ground, pulling the blades out and jumping off to stand by his girlfriend's side only when it was mere moments from impacting the ground.

"You know, you would have been crushed if I hadn't come along" he told her, kicking out at a Beowolf that got too close.

' _I am aware,_ ' she mentally replied, knocking another Beowolf's claws away and running it through with her blade, ' _thank you though._ '

As Fox fired off some shots into the crowd in front of them, he looked at her with a slightly irritated look, saying "If you knew it was there, why did you act oblivious to it? You could have died."

' _In all honesty, I was waiting for my knight in earthy coloured armour to save me_ ' she teased. He couldn't stay mad, so in one solid movement he took out a Grimm with a shot and closed the gap to plant a quick kiss on her lips, a gesture she also replicated.

"All you had to do was ask, y'know."

' _And where is the fun in that?_ '

"Hey!" came the sudden cry from Coco all the way across the clearing, "less kissing, more killing!"

As Neo rolled her eyes, Fox handed her the small vial of Ice Dust. "You know what to do." She nodded, then noticed a pool of almost azure coloured flames across the distance.

' _Fox, your puddle needs some attention._ ' He turned and spotted the flames, and in an instant he sprung from his spot over a portion of the pack, firing a few rounds into them, killing off one or two, and ran to his pool. He got out his vial of Ice Dust and ran around the edge, sprinkling what he could around the outside of the puddle, freezing it and letting the Dust works its way inwards. Once he was sure that was working, he chucked the rest to the middle of the puddle, causing the vial to explode Ice Dust out from the epicentre and freezing over the rest of the dark pool on the ground. In about 10 seconds from start to finish, one puddle had gone from aflame to completely inert.

"I've got one!" he shouted out, letting the other four know.

"Well done," shouted Coco, "think you can get another one done before the Time Bomb blows?" He glanced over at the burning beast and saw the flames burning with a dark lavender colour - it was close, but not completely there.

"Not sure, it'd be a struggle unless I could get it to stay still or speed up the process in some way."

Coco was about to give an order before Velvet responded to Fox's dilemma. "Take one of its limbs. There'd be less of it, so the flames would actually burn a little faster."

Now Coco spoke, her decision altered by her Mate's input. "Great idea Velvs! And great job with the Ursa hunny!"

"Thanks Coco" replied the Rabbit as she dug her heel into the back of the Bear Grimm, killing it.

"Fox, take one of its limbs, then it can't move a lot. Once you've successfully completed that, get it near the centre of this nest and then start destroying another puddle. Your priority is making sure that Creep takes as many others with it when it goes boom, especially the Alphas!"

"Understood Coco." Fox dashed towards the burning Grimm, focussing its attention on his with a couple of swift kicks to its side. It turned and growled at him, its hide now burning with a midnight blue flame. "Come on you creepy looking thing, let's move you somewhere nice." The Creep charged, just as Fox wanted, and he ran. It tried on numerous attempts to attack, but each time Fox flipped over it, infuriating it further. The scarred boy's tactic was a risky one; he would run straight into the line of fire of the remaining 5 Alpha Grimm, remove a limb of the burning Grimm and letting it explode, taking the Alphas and at least 60% of the other remaining creatures with it. By the time he was in the midst of the Alpha nest, the flame was now glowing azure blue, just as it was supposed to. Under normal circumstances, seeing that colour Fox would have thrown Ice Dust at it to extinguish the fire and kill the Grimm. Failing that, killing the Grimm normally would have yielded the same effect, only with less wasted Dust. This time, it was destructive option number 3's turn in the spotlight.

The creature started stumbling as it charged at Fox this time, a sign that the flames were taking their toll on its body - the slight green hue to the sharper blue flame and the increased intensity of it also showing that. Turns out, it was going to blow a lot sooner than they'd expected all on its own. "Guys, bomb's about to blow; get out of here!" Yatsuhashi pulled his Greatsword from the now flaking shoulder of an Ursa he just killed, and promptly ran to Velvet, who herself was fighting off against a pair of Beowolves with a hard light version of Cardin's mace (what he didn't know couldn't hurt him). Once her two targets were defeated she didn't have much time to react before she was scooped up onto the shoulder of her giant teammate, sitting atop it and creating Port's Blunderbuss as a way to lay down some supressing fire for Yatsuhashi's escape. Coco has defeated the Creeps and Ursa that had attacked her, not without sustaining some damage herself, and was also running away from the nest. Neo, however, was running towards the nest, specifically towards Fox. The Creep was large enough that an explosion created by it blowing up would have been far too great for practically anyone to outrun. She was the only one who could realistically save him and herself from sacrificing either of them to take out the other creatures.

' _Hey, no self-sacrificing on my watch._ '

He huddled up close and remained still, crouching down close to the ground as the creatures stalked in on them and the death cry of the Creep rang through their ears. "Sorry to disappoint Ni, but I had no doubts I would be leaving in a body bag."

The mute smirked, ' _what makes you think you would have left here? I might have just let you rot where you died._ ' The rumbling started and a few Grimm noticed. It was too late for them.

"Oh come on, you wouldn't do that."

' _And why not?_ ' The Creep started to glow brightly now, mere moments away from exploding.

"Because you love me too much."

' _Yuk!_ _ **That's**_ _what you had to offer? That's a load of bull-_ '

With one final gargantuan roar, the Creep's body exploded with the force of nearly two and a half tonnes of TNT. The green flames that came from the blast scorched the earth around it, leaving nothing but charred grass, blackened trees and broken rocks. Everything that was living within 30 metres of the epicentre was killed instantly, most things up to 50 metres not surviving for very long. The fireball that came from the blast rose high above the treetops, easily visible from the Resort. From her room, Juliette spotted the flames and looked out at it anxiously, her project slowly coming together as she stared at the green ball turning into a black pillar of smoke. Jade didn't see the blast, but she heard and felt it. She felt nervous at first, believing that Yatsuhashi and his team had been hurt, but then she told herself to calm down - she didn't want to panic and therefore make everyone else panic, so she tried one of Yatsuhashi's calming methods. After a minute or two, she was much more relaxed. She thanked her giant friend and returned to the spa, reminding herself to ask of this later.

CVY moved themselves from their hiding spots, searching for their two teammates who, as far as they knew, were about 3 metres away from ground zero. They walked around apprehensively looking for any signs that they were still alive. They all had a hunch they were, but until they saw them, Fox and Neo were MIA. Hopefully, not KIA.

"If I may, I vote we try and avoid doing that again." The more senior members nodded at Velvet's proposition; there was a lot of mess now, and whilst they had completely destroyed this nest - their main objective for the mission - they had also destroyed a large portion of the woods around them as well. The one silver lining that they could think of from this was that this area would have needed to have been completely cleansed before people could walk through here again, and they kind of already did that.

"I'm just saying," came Fox's voice from above, the three of them on the ground looking up to see the odd couple descending slowly towards them using Neo's parasol as a makeshift parachute, "that teleporting to the others would have been the safer option... I _know_ that this looks cooler, but that would have been safer... You are not Mary Poppins, Neo, and they can't hear you!" They touched down in front of them, the woman grinning whilst Fox looked slightly less impressed. "Hey guys."

"You know, Fox was right Neo," Yatsuhashi commented, "it would have been a fair bit safer to teleport to us rather than up. For all we know, there could have been Nevermores up there. And the fact you waited until literally the last second didn't help either." To say Neo looked a little annoyed that she was being told off was an understatement. She rested her parasol on her shoulder and rolled her eyes at him.

"Right, just for that, normal sleeping arrangements again tonight. And Velvet and I get the nicer bed." Neo immediately behaved after that, but her deed had been done and Coco's words were standing. The ice cream girl wasn't best pleased about that, but Fox did remind her that she brought it on herself. Whilst she was the oldest in the group by a fair few years - a fact she tried to remind them all, but one that ultimately didn't hold as a trump this time - sometimes Coco needed to treat her a little bit like a child. Whilst she was a far cry from the Neo that she originally was, the cold-hearted, merciless killer, she still had her moments - this being one. Unlike their original plan, which was to split up into groups and try to take out more of the nests at once, they opted to stick together as a full team after what the first one was like. They may not get them all covered like they had originally planned, but they got through them quicker and safer. After the second and third nest, the two men wondered if sticking together was the best idea, but Neo told them that they were sticking to this new plan. Coco had to admit, she secretly loved how easy it was to get Neo to comply with and enforce things by taking away something she wanted.

The team didn't get through all the nests as they had discussed they were going to today, but cutting their day off early meant they could fully recover and take out the remaining ones in much better shape in the morning. Plus, Yatsuhashi had someone to meet this evening as well; you couldn't be late for these things. As the five of them were walking back through the main gates of the Resort at around 5:50pm, they were greeted by Maron, who looked a little pleased to see them returning, but not 100% happy - they could all tell that much.

"Hey... um, yeah... I can guess why you're here."

The receptionist glared at the fashionista. "Can you Coco? Then, if you _can_ guess, please explain to me why there was a giant pillar of smoke coming from where one of the Grimm's nests was earlier today, accompanied by an almighty boom that some of us _felt_ even 1.5km away?"

' _I'm getting Goodwitch vibes here,_ ' Fox commented to Neo, ' _are you getting Goodwitch vibes here?_ '

' _I like it._ '

' _Of course_ _you_ _would, Neo._ '

"Long story short, one of the Grimm we were fighting caught ablaze and we thought it would be in the best interest of time and resources to export a little trick we learnt last year about blowing up Grimm to clear out the nest - which turned out to be a little more than a nest and was instead more like a giant hive. We'd only ever seen it done on a Boarbatusk pup, and that caused a pretty big blast. Honestly should have scaled it better..." Deep down, Coco was getting Goodwitch vibes as well, only Maron felt even scarier to her, as she was giving the caramel coloured leader the same fear and apprehension the crop wielding Professor did without having a semblance or activated Aura to speak of. And if you can match the fear Glynda Goodwitch can output without an Aura, you deserve to be feared when you're angry.

Byzantine eyes remained staring for a couple more seconds before they shut with a heavy sigh. "You are lucky you all came out of that blast alive. Please, for my sanity and the ease of the people currently visiting the 'Four Season Springs' Resort, do try to avoid doing that again." The five of them all silently agreed to her demand, then followed her back into the resort proper. They went to part just inside the main entrance, by Maron caught one of them before they left. "Oh, Yatsuhashi?"

"Yes Maron?"

"I bumped into Jade earlier today," the woman's name caught the group's attention, "she seemed very excited about tonight. Please be kind to her, she is here so often she has become like a daughter to me."

"You have my word, I would not do anything to intentionally hurt her." The receptionist smiled, satisfied with the answer given, and turned to walk away. The tank also continued walking away, but unlike Maron who was walking alone, Yatsuhashi had four other people he was walking with, three who were rather vocal and a fourth who was blissfully silent in comparison, but was the muscle of the group when he was otherwise occupied. Right now, she seemed to be standing very close to him, most likely there to restrain him if he didn't comply with what they were inevitably going to ask.

"So Yatsu, you figured out what you're going to be doing tonight with Jade?"

' _And_ _ **there's**_ _the question._ ' - "No Velvet, I do not know. We are just meeting up and, as we all know here, this is the first time I've ever done anything like this."

Coco rested a hand on his shoulder. "You know we want to help, but with what you told me, we _are_ going to back off and let you figure this out yourself." The emphasis on the "are" was very intentionally directed at the VFN of the group, as well as herself in retrospect.

"It is appreciated. But I will ask you and Neo something as the resident fashion gurus of the team: what am I going to wear?" The two Pans grinned, knowing they'd just been handed the reigns to dress their teammate up.

" _Let's get you dolled up for your date!_ "

"Please do not call it that Neo..." he replied with a sigh as he was dragged back to their rooms by the two women. Fox and Velvet looked at each other and shrugged, following their partners back at a comfortable distance.

* * *

I always thought it would be a tactic that either the White Fang or Salem would use at some point to send in Kamikaze Grimm to detonate and take out a large number of opponents, particularly if the Grimm were fighting a losing battle. Now, here's a question: scaling the size of the Grimm, how big would the explosion be for a Goliath, Sea Dragon and Grimm Dragon? Baring in mind a Creep was like 2.5 tonnes of TNT going off, and they're relatively comparable to human size. Food for thought.

Far more mellow chapter next week, but it can't all be excitement now, can it?

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	64. Tall Orders

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Jade was nervous, as anyone would be. She was fiddling with her dress - a simple knee length black number with a pink, orange and yellow pattern on the left side by the bottom of it - smoothing out the non-existent creases, making herself look presentable. She rounded off the look with a small bit of natural makeup and some very subtle rosy pink lipstick. "Nothing too over the top" she remembered saying, so to make her look a little more casual she wore a pair of light pink flats that matched the pink in the dress and a black leather jacket. She smoothed out the creases once again.

"You'll wear creases in if you keep doing that. Just stay calm."

"Right, sorry," Jade whispered in return, "thanks Juliette."

" _Who?!_ " the young Maiden shot back, her tangerine eyes glaring at the green themed woman from under her hood, glowing slightly in her rage.

"Sorry Juno! Your name is Juno!" The glow subsided, but the glare did not.

"That's better."

"Now, now, let's not have any of that." Maron just so happened to be walking past at the time, so took it upon herself to stop what was happening before it got too out of hand. "It was an honest mistake _Juno,_ a minor slip up."

"But one that could cost me my life, remember?" The cornsilk haired young woman seemed almost hurt at the fact her pseudo-mother and step-sister could forget so easily how little leeway she had in her life anymore.

Maron sighed, "Yes, I am aware. But this in of itself is risky; you wanted to leave your room just so you could see the man Jade here is so fascinated in. It's a trifle silly, if you ask me."

"I know..." Juliette admitted, turning back to the table she was sat at, her hood still masking her hair, "but you know how much I hate being kept in that room, especially now. The sooner the five of them can defeat that thing, the sooner I can have a decent night's sleep again." There was a brief silence before Juliette turned back to Maron and said, "and that isn't the _only_ reason. I've finished his gown as well, so this was an opportunity to give it to him."

"Jade could have done that."

"Yes, and then Jade could have been linked to me. I feel like it's safer this way." Both older women saw a flaw in her logic, but let it slide; she was doing this and, even though she didn't outwardly show it, she was the happiest she had been in a long time, ever since she last went up to her favourite Spring on the resort, the one she selfishly named after herself. The monster that resides up there caught her, and whilst her powers allowed her to free herself from its grasp before any lasting damage was done, she still felt drained and weak. Her mood was a lot worse as well, the girl so happy before, at times shining like the sun in her namesake month, was now dull and grey and moody, the exact opposite of what you think when you hear the word 'Summer'.

Jade's attention shifted slightly from Juliette's sadness to stare around the room, and to her surprise Yatsuhashi was already arriving; that lifted her spirits a bit. He wasn't wearing anything too formal, just his muted sky blue shirt and a pair of grey jeans along with some coffee brown brogues. He wasn't alone, Fox and Neo were walking with him, chatting away and carrying their robes under their arms. She initially wondered why the other two girls weren't there with them, but after giving it a brief amount of thought she decided she didn't want to know. She waved the trio of students over as Maron left to continue her duties.

"Hi Yatsu!"

"Good evening Jade."

"And hey there, Fox and... Orchid? Is that right?"

"Technically, it is," Fox mentioned, "but she prefers 'Neo', don't you hun?" The mute nodded and looked at him for a few seconds before Fox continued speaking. "She said that if you remember 'Orchid' better, she doesn't mind you calling her that."

"Wait, she didn't say anything or use Sign, how can you know what she's saying?"

"It's a long story Jade," Yatsuhashi assured, resting a hand on Jade's shoulder, "one that, with their permission, I might tell you." The pair nodded, clearly happy with that.

"Thanks you two." Neo couldn't help but notice the woman sat next to where Jade was, looking at them constantly throughout their entire conversation. She pointed her out to her teammates, and the second their eyes fell on her she turned away. "Oh, this is my friend, Juno."

"Hey..." she said as unenthusiastically as humanly possible in her best attempt to deter them from getting near. Not likely to happen when Neo is around. The ice cream girl walked from where she was to sit down next to Juno, her head cocked to one side in intrigue. Juno realised that there was someone there only after a few seconds, but rather than run away, she stared at the mute, curious as to what she was planning on doing. The older woman recoiled in shock at her eyes, but not out of fear but of amazement. Neo smiled and shut her eyes, scrunching her face up in concentration. When she opened her eyes again, they were the same tangerine orange that Juno's were, a sight that brought wonder to the face of the original owner of those eyes. "Is that what my eyes look like?" Neo nodded with a smile. "My eyes look sexy!" Jade and Fox both started laughing at that, embarrassing the cornsilk haired woman. "What?"

"It's not a bad thing," Fox promised as the laughs subsided to giggles, "it was just the way you jumped straight to that was really funny. Yes, they are sexy; have you never really seen them before?"

"Well, obviously I have, but it isn't the same, is it?" Juno turned to Neo and smiled, "you look really sexy with orange eyes. Can you keep them like that?" She held her hand out and wobbled it a bit, as if to say, "sort of". "Well you should wear them like that a little while. It suits you." Neo pulled out her Scroll and opened the camera to see herself. She did have to admit, she did look mightily sexy with these glorious orange eyes.

' _Fitting_ ' she thought to herself.

' _What is?_ ' replied Fox.

' _I'll explain in a bit._ '

Jade coughed deliberately, drawing attention to herself. "Anyway, Yatsu and I are heading off. It was nice to see you two again, and thank you Orc- Neo, for getting Juno to laugh. You don't know how much she's been needing that." The petite woman shrugged with a smile.

"Seriously, I needed that Neo. Oh, before I forget Jade," Juno stood and walked over to Yatsuhashi, rummaging around in her little black backpack she was carrying, "this is for you." She pulled out a robe, identical to every other one in the resort.

"Um..."

"Try it on" she insisted. With an initial hesitant shrug, he unfolded the white robe. Immediately he saw there was something different. For one, it was much longer than any of the other robes he tried on when he first got here. When he slipped it on over his shirt, it fit perfectly.

"This is my size exactly; did you find one hidden away somewhere?"

"No," Juno replied, "Mrs. S. worked her magic and made this just for you, so it's yours to keep." She leaned in close and spoke in a whisper, "just don't tell anybody, alright?"

"I understand."

"Well, enjoy yourself tonight Yatsu," his brother-in-arms commented, "we've got a lot of time to kill until we can get back into the room." Okay, now Jade was sure she _really_ didn't want to know where the other two were. "Got any recommendations for a couple of Hunters that need some relaxing, Juno?"

"I think I've got just the place for you. Bye Jade!"

"Bye Juno!"

"See you later Juno," added the gentle giant, "and thank Mrs. S. if you see her for me."

"She will appreciate it, believe me." And with that, Fox, Neo and Juno all rounded a corner out of the green pair's way for the rest of the evening. Jade sighed slightly, then looked at Yatsuhashi, who was still staring after the three of them.

"Everything okay up there?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. So, you come here often enough to know this place like your own home, where's a good place for food?" She giggled slightly and wrapped her arm around his.

"I'll show you. I hope you're hungry."

* * *

Yatsuhashi had to admit, he hadn't seen a restaurant like this in a resort. Most of the time, they had been diner-esque places or pub bars serving pub food. This, however, was essentially its own restaurant. The last time he'd been somewhere this fancy was at the end of their last academic year at Beacon, where the team treated themselves to a meal to celebrate their first official full year of being together as a five-piece team and, to quote Coco directly, "being the best damn team Ozpin has ever had walking through his doors!" Although he didn't really like blowing his own horn, in all honesty, she probably wasn't wrong.

They waited at the door for a minute or two and had a look at the drinks menu. They stayed simple, both not wanting to drunkenly do anything they'd regret, so Jade ordered a sparkling apple juice while Yatsuhashi got himself a glass of sparkling water. Jade escorted him over to a little table for two off to one side of the room, away from the windows and as far away from prying eyes as she could get them. They weren't in the very corner as she'd secretly hoped for, but it was close enough.

"Why did you not want to be in line of sight?" the tall man asked, sitting down opposite her at the table, "Are you embarrassed about us?"

"No!" she responded, once again too quick for her taste and slightly too loud for a couple of others' tastes. She slammed her hands over her mouth and gave herself a little more time to think before answering again. Once the waiter had arrived with the drinks they ordered at the door, she continued. "I'm not embarrassed, no. Far from it, I'm ecstatic - I never got the chance to date when I was education because people I liked got nervous around me, so I gave them a wide birth. I now know that it was my semblance throwing their emotions out of whack whenever mine went a bit crazy, but hey, better late than never I suppose." Yatsuhashi shrank back in his seat at the mention of the word 'date', fearing that she thought that it was what this was. I mean, technically it is, but he didn't want to think of it as such. It was an awkward situation he put himself in. "Not that I think _this_ is a date. I know you probably don't like to think of it as one, right?"

"That is correct. It seems so... alien, using the word having previously accepted who I was a long time ago. I'm sorry if it makes things odd on your end." Neon green eyes looked into his brown, trying to convey as best she could through eye contact alone that she thought nothing less of him for doing this, nor did she want anything more from him. She accompanied the look with the words to match.

"Yatsu, I know you may feel uncomfortable with this whole thing, which if that is the case we can stand up right now, apologise for wasting their time and we can leave and, I don't know, go have a hot stone massage to relax or something. I don't want you feeling like you have to do this, and if you'd much rather be somewhere else, then we can do that instead." She reached a hand across the gap to hold his quickly and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "I would do anything for a friend." The gentle giant eased again when she mentioned 'friend'. That's all this was when he thought about it. Yes, he had asked her if she wanted to do this, she said yes, but he had told her that he was aromantic and she seemed to understand the connotation behind it. Then again, she did say she did 'kind of' like him. It was very confusing for him and, even with his calm and stoic persona, overwhelming. The calm he was experiencing dissipated just as suddenly as it had appeared, and he grew more uneasy. "Yatsu, let's get out of here. You're not okay with this, so we'll leave."

"Jade, I am fine. I just need-"

"To leave," she interrupted, "because you are sweating bullets, clearly out of your comfort zone and would much rather be anywhere else but here." She went to stand but he held her hand tighter.

"Please, do not make a fool out of yourself. I just need to calm down a little. I realise it is a silly thing to get worked up over, so I shall take five minutes in the bathroom to compose myself and then we can resume as we would do normally." She shifted her weight back so that she was sat properly on the chair before he let go of her hand and went to get himself cleaned up in the bathroom. It was tough watching him walk there, it was a far cry from the person she spoke to this morning.

' _Wow,_ ' she thought to herself suddenly, ' _was it really only this morning?_ ' She thought back, just to see if her senses were playing up on her. Nope, she had only met him this morning. Thinking about it like that, it was clear why he may be acting the way he was - they've barely known each other for 24 hours. She guiltily sipped her fizzy apple drink, hoping he'd get back soon so that she could apologise to him.

Cold water splashed on the face of the giant, some of it getting on his shirt collar. That most certainly helped with a large amount of the worry he had, but that didn't rid him of it completely.

"What is the big deal Yatsu?" he chastised to himself in the mirror, staring at his reflection with anger at his current predicament, "why are you letting this get to you so much? You are having a meal with a new friend. That is all."

' _But she likes you, she said that herself._ '

"Even so, she _also_ said that she was fine and accepted the fact we don't date."

' _And you think she'll stay true to her word?_ '

"She had not shown any signs of going against her word. Besides, I trust her." His inner voice remained quiet for a while, his brain clearly not ready for that response. When it came back, it responded with;

' _Then let's get back out there then._ ' He used the towels in the bathroom to dry his face, then he left the room and headed back to the table to see Jade still sitting there (thank Oum) but looking very much guilty.

"Lien for your thoughts?" he asked, causing her to jump at the unexpected question from behind.

"Jeez, you frightened me half to death Yatsu!" A small smile grew on his face.

"Whilst I promise I will not do that again and that I did not mean to make you jump this time, I cannot deny the fact that it was rather funny to watch."

With crossed arms and a sarcastic tone, Jade muttered a simple "Oh, ha ha" before stealing another sideways glance at him and her face started smiling instinctively. He smiled back and sat down opposite her. "I take it you are feeling better then Yatsu?"

"Much better, yes. I simply needed to set my mind at ease about the situation."

"What about it?"

"Oh" was the only word he said - his brain wasn't ready for that question clearly. Given another few seconds to think on it, he answered properly. "I know you mentioned how you, quote 'Kind of like me', and I was still having that thought swirling around in my head. You said how it didn't matter that I wasn't against relationships but didn't really feel any romantic attraction, and although I did accept that there is still that doubt."

"Yatsu, you know how I feel about this, but I will say it again and again as many times as I need to until it sticks," she reached across the table again and placed her hand on his, "yes, I like you, no kind of about it. You are a very attractive young man. I'd be more than happy to have someone like you as a friend. When you said you were aromantic, I must admit afterwards I did look it up to see _exactly_ what it meant. Learning about it and how people can experience little to no romantic attraction but still feel things like platonic and paternal love was interesting, and I was honestly going to ask you where you fell there, but you had already told me, so that would be a little redundant. So, I am fine with that. Having you as a partner, as a friend, I don't really care that much anymore having learnt about it now, I would just like to have you in my life - you're too good of a person to me and for me to lose." She giggled ever so slightly as the waiter approached, removing her hand to cover her mouth. "Sorry if that sounded a little possessive near the end, but I think it's true. With my Aura and semblance and all that, I wouldn't have it unlocked if it wasn't for you."

"Jade, it is fine." The waiter interrupted the flow slightly asking for their food choices. Yatsuhashi ordered the beef and Jade had their crab dish, then as the waiter left he resumed from where he left off. "The fact you were honest enough to admit that to me takes a lot of guts. It took me until after the turn of the new year in my first year or Beacon to tell my teammates, but it was one heck of a weight off my shoulders once I did. And that was with Coco Adel flirting with me at every possible opportunity she could." Jade blushed slightly and felt herself getting slightly giddy at the name.

"I still can't believe Coco Adel's you team leader," she admitted through an ever strengthening blush, "that must be so cool."

"It took me a while to come down from the high I was on but yes, I admit it is incredibly cool. What most people forget is that no one is assigned leadership based on status alone. Coco was assigned leader because when the time came she fell naturally into the role. The year below us probably has the best example; Weiss Schnee attends Beacon but is not the leader of the team."

"Schnee?" It took Jade a few seconds to put two and two together. "Oh, Schnee. As in, 'Schnee Dust Company' Schnee?" He nodded. "Wow, yeah, that's proof enough." She slumped back in her chair a little to let everything sink in, a grin growing on her face. " _Still_ can't believe Coco Adel's on your team, much less your leader."

"Is someone fangirling over there?"

She shrugged. "I don't care, you're not in charge of me. I can fangirl over whoever I like." She glanced at him and shot him a wicked smile, not caring how childish she looked, despite being roughly 3 years older than him, not that you could tell by height.

"That you can. What I did want to say was that I am happy I make you happy, and I wanted to formally extend that offer of a relationship with you." On that, she shot back upright, eyes glimmering once again.

"Really?! You'd do that?"

"Of course," he smiled, "I think we could do something about us. There will be a lot we'd need to work out though, I had come to a mentality that I would remain single for the rest of my life, so this is something I wasn't expecting, but I believe that if we take it slow we can get through this." Her smile continued to grow, and he was pretty sure he saw a tear start to form. Upon wiping her eye, his assumptions were proven correct. "You know, you never actually gave an answer, you just sat there grinning."

"Oops, sorry." She sat up straight and cleared her throat before speaking. "Yes, I accept. I will be your... your, um... what would I-"

"Partner. It's the most gender neutral and basically undisputed term for us." With a nod, she finished her acceptance; a little too formal for Yatsuhashi's taste, but she'd said yes so... Win-Win. He raised his glass of sparkling water, she got the right idea and raised her apple juice. "To partners."

"To partners." They both took a drink, smiling all the while.

"If it is all the same to you, I say we keep things a little slow. There is a lot that needs to be discussed about us, what each of us is and isn't comfortable with doing or the other person doing, etc. Sorry to spring that on you afterwards, but with someone like me I would much rather we say outright now rather than awkwardly find out later."

She reached her hand across the table once more and rested her hand on his. "That sounds perfect, I say we do that as soon as you can manage; I know you're here for work purposes, technically, so I'm fine knowing I'm second priority."

"I wouldn't exactly put it like that, but I appreciate your understanding nonetheless. If it's alright though, I'd like to lay a couple of rules down now."

"Fire away big guy."

"Well, first off," he started grinning to himself as he looked down at his hand and hers on top of it, "I don't like people touching my hands." Her smaller digits flew off his before her brain even caught up.

"Hey, wait a minute..."

"I'm sorry," he grinned again, "I couldn't resist. But, contrary to what I just said, hand touching is fine with me. As is hugs and cuddles - I've been told I'm good for cuddles."

"I imagine you are" she replied. Unbeknownst to them, more time had passed than they had thought as the waiter appeared with two plates, one carrying Yatsuhashi's beef wellington and the other carrying Jade's crab dish.

"Enjoy your meals." The pair of them tucked straight in, with Yatsuhashi being a little more ravenous than Jade because he hadn't eaten anything properly since before he set out mid-morning to take out the Grimm nests. They filled some of their silences with general small talk, but other times they were very much content with sitting there listening to the ambience of the restaurant.

"So, Jade, why here specifically?" he asked, breaking their silence as the plates were taken away.

"Huh?"

"Sorry if that bothers you, I was honestly content with the silence, but we have known each other for less than 24 hours and we have already agreed to be each other's partner." Saying it out loud, the idea sounded rather preposterous. Then again, Fox and Neo started dating in an equally short amount of time, but Yatsuhashi did remind himself that their situation was far different from what his is right now. "I just thought I would ask."

Despite being initially hesitant to answer, evident by her dropped expression, Jade responded with a simple "what did you want to know about it?" Thinking on it as the words left her mouth, that was probably a bad call in terms of what to say.

Clearly, he didn't think so. "There was no hesitation on coming here when I asked if there was anywhere to go, so I assumed that there must be some sort of connection for you." Her expression dropped even further at his realisation of this, and immediately he skirted away from the topic. "If you do not wish to tell me, then we can move-"

"No, no it's fine, just- just not right here, not right now. Is that alright?"

He smiled a reassuring smile. "That sounds good to me." He stole a brief glance over the green girl's shoulder and spotted their waiter returning with two new plates in his hand. "But do you know what sounds even better?" She cocked her head and was about to turn to see what he could, only for their plates to be placed down in front of them. "Dessert."

* * *

 **~-OMAKE-~**

The room that Coco and Velvet were in was eerily quiet. As per the ground rules that Team CFVYN agreed on when they arrived, either one of the couples could "book" the room for an evening so that the other couple could go and do something in the resort whilst the booking pair could do each other in the resort.

Tonight, however, things weren't as they seemed.

"I can't believe we're doing this..."

"How come?" Velvet replied, her voice giving off an element of hurt at her Mate's comment.

The beret toting woman, who was currently wearing neither it nor her beret _and_ had her hair flowing with a slight wild nature as opposed to its everyday defined look, shrugged with uncertainty. "It's just..." she sighed, giving her mind a precious couple of seconds to piece together the words she planned on saying, "how long have we been together Velvs?"

"As a couple, I'd say coming up 2 and a half years."

"Yeah, and we've hardly done this in all that time." To calm her mind and ready herself, Coco found some solace in limbering up, deliberately facing away from Velvet. The Faunus smirked at the very odd behaviour of her partner.

"Coco Adel, are you nervous?"

"Of course I'm nervous!" she snapped back.

"But you did this with Blake and Yang back in our Second Year, remember? I thought you'd be fine with this."

Coco craned her neck to glance at the Rabbit behind her as she reached for the device. "That was then, this is now." Velvet tightened the strap, pulling the cord taut so that it would snap against her skin causing Coco to jump like... well, like Velvet would have done before. "Could you please stop with the teasing and let's get this over with." Velvet relented and pressed the button on the device. As it started up, she playfully smacked Coco's bum.

"Are you ready for this Coco?" she asked as she gripped her device tighter.

' _As ready as I'll ever be_ ' she thought to herself, the thoughts conveyed as only a simple bob of the head as she lowered her stance, ready to take the punishment that was coming. After about 10 seconds of nothing, a new voice filled the room.

 _~DANCERS, READY?~_

Coco audibly gulped as she glanced over at Velvet. The Faunus had grown up in a household with her eldest sister, who loved dancing and was a full-time performer now, so she had been dancing since she was young and games like the 'Wish to Boogie' Series were naturally her forte. As much as she would love to lie and say she could, Coco couldn't dance at all. She was always nervous with these games, because it was literally playing with one of the very few things she would have happily avoided. Why did Velvet have to book their room to play a dance video game?

"I'm gonna whoop your ass, Coco" she taunted as the music started.

' _If only..._ ' the fashionista thought as they struck the first pose.

* * *

I know some of you may think that this is going very quick for Yatsuhashi and Jade, but remember that he is just seeing this as a friendship with a different name. The details of his preferences haven't been explored (yet) and as such she wouldn't know exactly where he lies within the category of "aromantic", she just knows he is in there. Also, friends do this sort of thing all the time - yeah, maybe not a restaurant like this, but they go out together from time to time.

Now, who saw that Omake coming? I wanted to see what I could do that sounded sexual right up until the reveal, and I personally think it came across quite well.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is always appreciated


	65. Not The Proposal I Had In Mind

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Fox woke up the next morning feeling more refreshed than he ever had before in his life. Juno had taken him and Neo to get Jin Shin Jyutsu, something they both openly admitted that neither had heard of before, but they wished they had heard of it before. It utilised the location of "Safety Energy Locks", as the pair of them were told these points were called, to allow their Aura to flow through their body much more naturally, rather than having it clogging at points and letting negativity in life hold them back.

Juno did admit to them that this sort of thing is usually for people dealing with things like stress or sleeplessness, but considering the pair of them were future Huntsmen, she believed it would definitely help them in the future. Waking up as he did, Fox could categorically say that the treatment worked wonders - he hadn't felt this relaxed and seemingly stress free in years.

Fox looked over his shoulder to see his girlfriend sleeping peacefully beside him, a genuine smile plastered all over her face. With a smile of his own growing, he leaned over and kissed just above her temple. ' _Good morning Ni._ '

' _Morning Fox,_ ' she replied, already sounding completely awake. He felt ever so slightly envious, her voice never sounded tired or exhausted. But then again, he needed to remember that she never had a voice as such for him to hear. Plus, her voice may sound like she'd been awake for hours, but her body didn't respond in the same way. She tried easing herself up slightly, but her arms were so relaxed after their session that they gave way without a moment's hesitation straight from under her. ' _Oh, I don't want to get up._ '

' _I know exactly what you mean,_ ' he replied, scooting over and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She responded by cuddling closer to him, resting her head on his scarred chest, ' _my body just feels so different now._ '

' _Sex doesn't even feel this good afterwards!_ ' She flinched at her words slightly and glanced up at Fox, ' _um, no offense._ '

' _I'm not going to take offense to something I agree on. Don't get me wrong, it's still as great as ever, but I feel more exhausted then relaxed afterwards._ ' She smiled again and returned to relaxing on his chest, deciding to silently agree with him. They stayed like that for a long while, breathing in sync and letting their bodies wake up completely in its own time. They did leave a note on the other couple's bedside table and on Yatsuhashi's pillow saying how they were told to "let their bodies wake up naturally this morning" and as such they will most likely be starting their work a little later today.

' _Fox?_ ' Neo asked after 20 minutes or so, her eyes still shut but her body near enough ready to get out and go.

"Yeah?" he whispered, not wanting to speak any louder than that at present.

' _Have you put any more consideration into marriage?_ ' The question was a little bit out of the blue in context, but the topic had been discussed between the pair of them before.

"I'm not objecting to the subject matter, but I must ask what brought this on."

' _If I say it was the Jin Shin Jyutsu, would you believe me?_ '

"Not really."

' _Fuck..._ '

"Don't worry about it Neo, I'm sure the actual reason would convince me more." She silently sighed and opened her eyes, shifting herself up his body so that their heads were lying next to each other's on the pillow.

' _I have been thinking about it a lot more recently, giving how our final year has started. I'm going to be 28 by the time graduation comes rolling around and, honestly, the thought scares me. It's why I simultaneously love and hate Ruby - she's 10 years younger than me! The fact that there's such an age gap between us made me realise that time is ticking on. I don't want to rush you - we did_ _ **plenty**_ _of that when we first started dating-_ '

"Hey, I wasn't complaining about that."

' _I know you weren't,_ ' she teased, a slight blush coming to her cheek at the mention of it, ' _I sure as hell wasn't either. What with not having any action since I'd hooked up with Maggie the day after we'd come back from death and a lot of times missed between us, that first time was just as special for me as it was for you, even if you were the only one who lost their virginity then._ '

' _Honestly, your experience made it easier and less awkward for me_ ' the copper haired boy admitted, speaking in his head so to not let his not-in-the-room-but-could-potentially-walk-in-at-any-second teammates hear.

' _Glad to know that. But I digress, even though we rushed at the start, we've stayed strong together. I remember Velvet, bless her, having her doubts after we got back from seeing my family, wondering if once the wish had worn off we'd grow apart. Never happened, did it?_ '

"Nope, we're just a couple of hard-asses!"

' _Hey, my ass is anything_ _ **but**_ _hard! I recall you describing it as "what you imagine a pillow of clouds feels like"._ ' Fox visibly flushed in shame, quite a feat considering his dark and scarred complexion, bringing a smirk to Neo's face. ' _If you were lying to me, which you better prey you aren't, then you really seem to like it a lot despite its "hardness"._ '

"I was referring to us as a whole, not our literal hard asses."

' _Ooh..._ ' came her obviously sarcastic reply of false misunderstood. ' _But anyway, honeymoon period wore off and we were... are, still going strong. And I personally feel like I'm ready to go on with the relationship; get married, that sort of thing. But it's a two person thing, I can't just rock up one morning in the dorm in a wedding gown and say, "get up loser, it's time to wed me", it needs planning on both our parts._ '

"Not going to beat around the bush, I wouldn't put it past you to do that sort of thing." There was a pause after Fox spoke before Neo contributed to the conversation once more.

' _Okay, I_ _ **may**_ _do that, but only if you take to fucking long to propose to my ass!_ '

"I can do that now if you want" he commented slyly.

' _Wait, what do you-_ ' but she was cut off by Fox shifting his weight picking up Neo and getting her kneeling facing away from him on the bed.

"Neo's ass, will you marry me?" He couldn't keep a straight for long and the laughter came before the sound of his words had dissipated into the void. His laughter was suddenly muffled as the butt he proposed to declined, and the woman the butt was attached to was noticeably angry at him, jumping from her position to squash his face with said bum.

' _You will apologise or so help I will suffocate you with my ass cheeks!_ '

' _Is that supposed to be a threat?_ ' he thought, speaking being an impossibility at this moment.

' _Apologise!_ '

' _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just remove your ass from my face please. Or your night shorts, either or really - I'm getting mixed signals._ ' She sat down harder on his face. ' _Sorry again, sorry again!_ ' She relented eventually, but not before he had nearly passed out from lack of oxygen.

' _Do not play with my feelings like that Fox,_ ' she demanded, staring right at him with a look of steely determination, ' _or Oum help me I will skewer you with a flag pole and feed you to the next Grimm we fight like a fucking kebab._ '

Holding his hands up in fear, he squeaked out a terrified, "Don't piss you off again, don't play with your feelings on this matter; got it." Her look faded to one of exhaustion and she rested her head in her hands, Fox noticing her eyes both turning brown and tearing up before they were completely covered. "Neo? Are you okay hun?" The hiccups told him "no" before her head could shake to tell him. He shifted himself and hugged her close, letting her silently cry into his chest. "Shh, it's okay Ni. I'm never going to do that again, I promise. I was so far in the wrong, you had every right to be mad at me."

' _You're damn right I do,_ ' she said, her thoughts perfectly lining up to her sniffling, ' _this means a lot to me Fox, and I am not going to let it be the subject of petty jokes at it or my expense!_ ' Fox recoiled ever so slightly at the harshness of her words. Sure, they've had their rows over the years, some of them fairly heated - he still had the scar from one right across his lower back to prove it - but they always came out the other end. This time though, her words had more impact than they ever did during the arguments.

"Neo..." the ice cream girl looked up at her boyfriend, genuine concern on his face, "that's not the only reason, is it?" The second those words left his mouth, Neo's lip started trembling again and the tears returned. Not only did the tears return, but Coco, Velvet and Yatsuhashi thought that now would be a god time to return.

"Hey guys, we're-" Coco stopped when she saw Neo crying into Fox's chest. Fox mumbled an inaudible "Not now Coco..." the second he saw the teasing grin start to form on the fashionista's face. "What did you do to her this-"

"I said not now Coco!" he shouted back, hugging Neo protectively closer and frightening Velvet into jumping into Coco's embrace at the same time. Everyone in the doorway was in shock, their leader most of all. She'd been with her team long enough to know what she could and couldn't get away with and everyone wasn't fazed by a little bit of light team banter, but to see Fox not even tolerate a single comment - heck, not even a full comment, he cut her off before she got the chance to finish - then she knew that it was something very serious.

"Alone, or company?" she asked, a little scared herself of how volatile the scarred boy was at the moment. He looked down at his girlfriend, wanting her say on the matter; she _was_ the one who was needing the space. She answered him, still hugging close to him.

"Thanks Ni," he replied gently, giving her forehead a brief kiss. "She said she'd like us to have some privacy. You'll know about this soon enough, but for now, she wants this to stay between the pair of us." Coco's feel melted and a soft smile came through.

"That makes sense. Velvs and I will just grab our stuff and get ready in Yatsu's room, alright?" He nodded, giving the young women a chance to collect their belongings. They did just that, grabbing their combat outfits for the day along with some basic washing things. Before they left though, Velvet ran up and caught the pair in a hug.

"You'll make it through whatever it is you've got going on, I know it. You're a strong couple."

"...Neo says, 'thanks Velvet'." The Rabbit briefly giggled, then bounded off them and made her way to the door with Yatsuhashi, who waited patiently there for them. The Rabbit took the key from him, wanting to get in the shower pronto so that the least amount of time was wasted. When Coco had collected her stuff, she rested it all on the edge of the empty bed and made her way over to sit next to the couple on the other bed. "Hey Coco."

"Listen," she began, assertiveness and tenderness coming across in her voice, "take as long as you need to. One of us will pop our heads in in about half an hour or so, if you're not up to coming with us then we'll head out without you - just so that we can cover some ground, make some progress, that sort of thing; at the very least we'll scout the land and see what we'd be up against with the remaining nests, maybe even take a couple out if they're small enough. I don't want you out there when you are not in the right frame of mind. You matter to us all." Fox smiled a silent thanks, then glanced down at Neo, who was still sniffling slightly but refused to remove her face from Fox's chest. Coco reached and grabbed a hold of Neo's chin gently and waited for the mute to respond accordingly and turn her head. When she did, Coco placed a comforting kiss on the older woman's lips. Tear strained heterochromatic eyes flipped to pink and a ghost of a smile came across the tri coloured girl's face as she opened her eyes from the brief kiss. "Glad I got you smiling again." Neo started blushing, the colour creeping up very slowly but noticeably, a curse on her emotions, making her so easy to read because of her pallor.

"Coco, no stealing my girlfriend, you have your own" Fox warned, the banter restarting after the mood was lifted.

"No promises." She winked and walked out the door, _very_ deliberately swaying her hips with every step. As the door clicked shut and silence returned, Neo glanced down, smiled an evil smile and spoke first.

' _Down boy._ '

"What are you-" he glanced down and felt what she had noticed, then promptly tried to cover it up. "Sorry!"

' _Nothing I haven't seen before. But I must ask, why?_ '

"It was hot, alright?!" he responded in a panic. "Coco Adel kissing my equally bombshell of a girlfriend inches from my own face was hot."

' _Yeah it was,_ ' the woman admitted, glancing down once again.

"Stop it. My body is agreeing with what you're saying, but my mind is wondering whether it should be confused or aroused right now."

' _Aroused sounds like the more fun option,_ ' Neo openly admitted.

"And anyway," he said, bringing the conversation back to where it was before their teammates walked in, "you still have a little explaining to do." The mute sighed and shifted her weight to that it would be more comfortable for Fox, considering neither knew how long they'd be here for.

' _I do, don't I? So, where were we?_ '

"Your reasoning."

' _Right..._ ' Try as she might, Fox knew she was stalling, she always did that when it was a subject she was nervous about, so didn't entertain any of her attempts of diverting the conversation. After no more than two minutes of trying to change the subject passed, she knew she had lost and got on with it. ' _The first time we went to see my parents, do you remember that?_ '

"Neo," he warned.

' _No, no this is relevant, I promise._ ' His lips curled upwards with a sigh, but he wasn't frustrated. Far from it, it was comforting to know she wasn't feeling as nervous about it anymore.

"Yeah, I remember it. I beat your brother in a friendly spar, despite him being about 10 years older and more experienced than me." The pride that came through in his voice when he said that was very clear and Neo couldn't help but silently giggle at it.

' _He still both hates and respects you for that, especially considering you were blind the week before that._ ' He held his head higher hearing that. ' _But that wasn't it. Do you remember when L-_ ' She stopped herself.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

' _When... when Uncle Lang di- passed on..._ ' it had been some time, but the death was still raw on her mind and speaking about it was still pretty hard, to the point where she outright refused to say 'died' in the same sentence as him.

"How could I forget?"

' _He gave us his blessing to marry that day. It meant the world to me to know that he approved of you, and it still does to this day. I remember we talked about marriage and how you said that you could already see us spending the rest of our lives together. No offence Fox, but that was a long time ago._ '

A metaphorical lightbulb came on in Fox's head and he put the pieces together. "I think I can see where this is going."

' _Despite the conversation we had back then, nothing came of it at all. Now I know, we both wanted to put it off until after we've graduated,_ _ **in 9 months**_ _..._ '

"Subtle."

' _Wasn't trying to be,_ ' she shot back. ' _Anyway, you said you were fine with it back then. Are you still now?_ ' The copper eyed boy looked her in the eyes and smiled the sincerest smile he could muster.

"Orchid, nothing would make me happier than for you to be my wife." The shock use of her birth name genuinely made her eyes jump to vanilla white for a few seconds, but they were quickly replaced with strawberry pink. "I know how much this mission means to you for our friends in HLQN, so we will do this right and get everything cleared so that this can be put to bed. Once we are done and we get paid, you and I are going shopping. We are going to go and get rings measured for each other and we are going to get them as soon as we can. I think we've waited long enough and I can kind of see where you were going with this."

' _That's..._ ' truly lost for words, Neo could think of nothing to do to express how she felt right now. She let reality catch her back up and she smiled. ' _Thank you, Fox. That was exactly what I wanted._ ' Despite her jubilation, she wouldn't make eye contact, but Fox didn't need to pry because she explained herself immediately. ' _I felt that I was wasting Uncle Lang's blessing. Having it sitting around on the proverbial shelf collecting proverbial dust made me feel bad, especially as it was one of the last things I heard him say. I just... I want it to be right, for him, and I know that everything is going to be fine._ '

"Uncle Lang would be proud of you for taking this step; he was proud of you in life and he would be now, even if he is not here in the flesh." Her lips curled upwards again, even as a tear fell from her eye. "So, when were you thinking?"

' _When was I thinking what?_ '

"Wedding date. I would have thought that would have been on the plan." She playfully smacked his arm. He knew it was playful because it only hurt for a minute - had it been deliberate he knew that was function in that arm gone for the rest of the day.

' ** _I_** _am not planning the wedding._ _ **You**_ _aren't either._ _ **We**_ _are planning the wedding,_ _ **together**_ _. Once we have a basic plan, then we involve the other three to help refine and come up with back up ideas, Oum knows if we'll need those backups but I'd rather be sure. Then we'll get everything sourced for things like date and venue and-_ '

"Neo," he interrupted, breaking her streak, "you've planned the plan. I think that's fantastic, and that's all we'll need for now. We haven't even got rings on each other's fingers, just a promise that it will happen. So, what's that: promise of marriage, getting the ring, putting rings on fingers, planning the wedding - that's three steps ahead of where you need to be. If we keep that, maybe even drop it to two steps ahead, then we'll be fine and set." The mute nodded, happy with the proposed plan.

' _Thank you, Fox,_ ' she said kissing his lips, ' _thank you so much. You do not know what a weight off my mind this has been._ '

"I'm glad I made you a lot happier now. Also, sorry for earlier again - not just what I said, but the fact we probably undid all of the Jin Shin Jyutsu we did yesterday with all the stress I put you through."

' _Eh, I'll take being a little stressed if it means we have a plan sorted._ '

"I can get behind that."

' _You normally do anyway._ ' Fox's face dropped instantly.

"We were having a moment Neo!"

' _We were having a moment earlier too, and you decided you wanted to literally propose to my ass!_ '

"...Touché."

* * *

I love the dynamic between these two. It's a constant battle between sincere moments and innuendos - it's so much fun writing it!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	66. Future Plans

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Velvet was the first of the three to be completely ready for the day, so she offered to go in and check on Fox and Neo before they headed off. When she knocked on the door before she entered, she was surprised that someone answered it.

"Oh, hi Neo."

" _Hiya Velvet._ " The mute stared at the mage, who was currently looking at her like a Deer Faunus in headlights, for a few seconds before cocking her head to one side and clapping once to break her out of her trance. " _You spaced out for a second Velv, are you okay?_ "

"Oh, sorry. I am fine, thank you, but that's only because I wasn't expecting you to be up and about after earlier." Neo shrugged that all off and replied, dropping her Scroll onto the nearest bed as she invited Velvet in quickly - as it was someone she knew could understand Sign Language, she didn't need her Scroll.

" _We were just discussing some things that were fairly personal, especially for me, but we've moved on from that and we're all set now._ "

"Great! Can I ask what it was all about, or would you rather not?" Neo's expression fell to a line as she weighed up her options. It's true, she and Fox did discuss whether they should tell their teammates about their plans first, then officially ask them to help afterwards, or to spring the surprise proposal on them and then ask them officially straight after as a good One-Two combo, but they were expecting to tell them much later if anything. She knew that talking to Fox in the shower wouldn't be difficult, but she didn't really want to interrupt him or invade his thoughts. She made her mind up there and then that the team wouldn't know everything until they were both ready to tell, but she would hint at what it might be.

" _I'm not going to tell you everything - that's for another day - but I can tell you that we were planning on what we were going to spend our reward for completing the mission on._ " A querying eyebrow raised and something in the back of Neo's head started screaming. ' _Has she figured it out already?! Did I say too much? I think I did. That's not good, that is **really** not good!_ '

"Well," the Faunus began, breaking Neo out of her internal screams, "I'm glad that whatever things you were planning have been solved and that you're both happier now. Can I assume you'll be coming with us?"

" _Yeah, we'll just need a little more time to get ready if that's alright._ " The mage simply smiled and nodded, then walked out and returned to the other room to tell the rest of them. The first door clicked shut and Neo sighed in equal parts relief and terror. ' _There was no way she didn't suss it out, Velvet's too smart to let something like that go over her head._ '

"Hey Velvs," Coco said as her Mate walked through the second door, her own hair wrapped in a towel and still a little wet from the shower, "how are they fee-"

Once this door clicked shut, Velvet spun round and jumped straight to Coco, pulling her close to whisper in her ear. "They're thinking about marriage, I know it."

"Holy shi-!" Velvet forcefully clamped her hands over her Mate's mouth in a panic that the couple next door would hear her, not caring if it hurt the fashionista. "Ow..." she moaned, her pained cry muffled by fingers.

"Your fault for shouting," the Faunus replied in a harsh whisper, removing her hands from Coco's mouth, "but yeah, discussing things on their own, 'very personal stuff', and talk of how they're going to be spending our reward money; it can't really be anything else."

"That's so adorable," Coco responded in a whisper, finally taking the hint that they needed to be quiet about this all, "but why would they want to keep it a secret? We're a team and we'll support them no matter what, they know that."

"I know they do, but we can't it spring on them _as if_ they have told us, we wait for them to _actually_ tell us. As it stands now, what we have done is I've taken an educated guess on their discussion topic."

"That is true." Coco moved away and started getting ready for the day, but still keeping her hair in the towel wrapped around her head. "Hey, have you thought about us doing that?"

"What, marriage?"

"Yeah. I mean, what would we do?"

"Well, I spoke to Blake about it in the latter weeks of summer vacation and she mentioned again how there are three different stages of Mate's Marks. The first stage is temporary, the second is permanent but not final. The third stage, she says, is rarely done but it's the completion of everything the Mark stands for. Third stage Mate's Marks are essentially the Faunus equivalent of marriage without the ceremony, so if we did want to go through with doing that, we could essentially be married." The pregnant pause was felt by both women in the room as thoughts flew around heads and hundreds of miles an hour.

"So... we could get married by simply completing the Mark to its third stage?"

Velvet scratched the back of her head in uncertainty, "I mean, I don't think it's going to be as easy as either of us make it out to be, but we'll need to speak to Blake or one of the nurses back at Beacon on the matter - Blake seems to be the expert on this sort of thing. We can't rush this."

"I know... but what if I wanted to do things properly? Like, human properly?"

"What, as in ceremony, white gown, bride and groom, vows, What-Fox-and-Neo-are-most-likely-planning type properly?"

"Yeah."

"I-I'm... not too sure. I don't think we'd even need to be if we're Marked like that, in most places I believe she said it classes as an official pairing."

"Oh." The unease in the room grew slightly as the conversation hit a slight dead end. "What if we do something a little unorthodox?"

"'You' and 'unorthodox' don't mix well Coco, no offense."

"Here me out. So, we go all the way to stage three and get 'Mark Married', right?"

"Please don't call it that," Velvet groaned.

"I'm trying to make a point here. So, we're married on Faunus terms and technically legally married as well. So, instead of the full human ceremony, we just get each other rings? We may be married already by that point, but I'd want something to show everyone else that we're together rather than relying on the Mark, which whilst it is incredibly cool, for the most part _is_ covered up, so you can see my dilemma here."

"I do, yeah," a smile grew on Velvet's face, "but I don't care. That is a perfect idea! We don't even have to have a full ceremony all to ourselves; if we plan it right with the two next door, we can highjack the proceedings for some time just so that there's an official overseeing the handing out of the rings." Coco's face lit up as well as Velvet seemed on board with the idea, crossing the gap between them and wrapping her in a hug. "Gods, I love you Coco."

"And I love you Velvet." She kissed the Faunus between the ears, causing the shorter girl to crumple in sheer bliss, "I love you so much." They stayed there for a few seconds before realisation crossed her mind. "Y'know, if we complete our Marks and wait until those two get married," she nodded her head to the wall that separated the two rooms, "they might not tie the knot for a long time. It's a long time without rings."

"Coco, I don't give a damn. I'll be yours and you will be mine."

"And our children will be beautiful" the fashionista finished without a single hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"Yeah, they will, they'll take on my head-turning good looks and your unwavering loyalty and charm." Coco recoiled in hurt at her Mate's words.

"Ouch! What about _my_ head-turning good looks?"

The Faunus smirked. "You're alright, I guess." They couldn't keep it up for long and soon they were both giggling piles of mess on the floor, a sight that greatly confused Yatsuhashi as he exited the bathroom.

* * *

Team CFVYN were walking through the outer grounds of the resort at around mid-afternoon. They'd managed to all leave the resort in equally good moods and, even after taking care of one of the nests on today's patrols, they were generally just as calm and relaxed as they were when they left for the day just 3 hours prior.

Velvet was on navigator duty today as the nest they were trying to find now was in a secluded spot of dense woodland that only she could pinpoint with her acute hearing. Yatsuhashi was close by her side to offer help with directions, but also as a means of defending her should anything jump out suddenly and she didn't have the time to defend herself. Coco took the middle position in the group, surrounded by her team so that she could keep an eye on everyone equally, which left Neo and Fox bringing up the rear, checking for anything that would try a sneak attack.

' _Fox, I think Velvet knows about the plan._ '

"What?" - ' _How? We haven't told anyone yet._ '

' _Yeah, about that... when she came in to check on us and see if we were coming along for the day, I said in the vaguest possible way I could that we were talking about what we'd buy with our reward money._ '

' _How could she have figured it out from that?_ '

Neo just looked at Fox, partially frustrated at him, partially guilty for leading them to this predicament - her need to tease in that one moment could have cost them the element of surprise. ' _Fox, Velvet is by and large the brightest out of all five of us. She's very good at piecing small bits of information together to get the full picture, I'm pretty sure a few badly chosen words on my part is going to get her grey matter working out what's going on in no time._ '

' _Shit..._ ' the pair glanced forward, looking at the Faunus in question, then her partner and her current bodyguard, if that's what you'd call him. ' _Should we just up and tell them then?_ '

' _If I'm totally honest with you, I want to say, "We are **not** telling them now!" But what other options do we have? We tell them now, we tell them later, at the end of the day they're still going to find out. If we get it over and done with, we can stop worrying about them knowing._ ' Her breath grew a little heavier as the thoughts just got a whole new meaning behind them. ' _We need to tell our team we plan on marriage._ ' Fox agreed with her, the others were going to be told eventually, there was no way they wouldn't be told. Admittedly, they had planned on taking the whole team out one day and Fox proposing to Neo in their presence, then asking them to help at the same time, but this would achieve the same results, just with less show. Fox linked hands with his girlfriend as she teleported the pair of them directly in front of Velvet and Yatsuhashi, frightening the poor girl and putting the swordsman on edge.

"Sorry Yatsu," he looked at the Faunus as well, who had just recovered from her mild heart attack having two people appearing directly in her face, "and Velvet."

"Any particular reason you did that Neo?" Coco asked, her voice agitated somewhat at hearing her Mate scream suddenly only to see two of her teammates as the cause for it.

" _We need to tell you something, and we thought I'd be best if we did it now instead of letting it go unchecked for ages._ "

The fashionista sighed, "alright, but it better be a darn good explanation." As the five of them stopped, Coco, Yatsuhashi and Velvet all standing opposite Neo and Fox, a slight breeze made its way through the leaves, sending a small but noticeable chill down the small women's spines.

"We, myself and Neo, had spoken about this before a couple of times in private back in the first couple of months of dating. Back then, we knew what we still do now, but we had decided to put it off until later in our lives when it became more appropriate. The conversation topic resurfaced early this morning and we decided that now would be the best time to kick that whole thing into motion." He reached out and interlocked his fingers with Neo's once more, the comfort and confidence that gave him spurring him on to finish the explanation. "The pair of us have decided that, after graduation, we are going to marry each other."

Coco smirked upon hearing that news, but it wasn't a sinister smirk. It was an approving smirk combined with a 'well damn, looks like you hit the nail on the head Velvet' smirk. Yatsuhashi smiled genuinely. Velvet was a lot less subtle; she squealed and rushed in to hug the pair.

"Oh my gosh, that's wonderful you two!"

"Thanks Velvet," he responded, returning the hug, "but there's more."

"There is?" On realising that, she backed away, her face glowing red from embarrassment at jumping the gun slightly.

" _I told you earlier that we were discussing what we were going to get with our reward money, right?_ " The Faunus nodded, connecting the dots but not quite reaching the conclusion when Neo started signing again. " _Well, we were discussing that we'd spend this reward money on rings for each other, both engagement and wedding._ " Velvet started squealing again but the mute just held her hand up, telling her that there was still more, so the squeal remained bottled up once more. " _As much as I think we'd manage, we can't do this all alone. So, we'd like to ask you if you would help us plan our wedding._ " All three of their eyes lit up with excitement and joy, but no one did anything other than looked pleased.

"That was everything this time Velvet, you can- oof!" He didn't get to finish as the Rabbit threw herself at him, tackling him to the ground.

"Fox, that's wonderful! It is truly, truly wonderful!" She couldn't help but squeal some more as her legs kept flopping about in excitement.

" _I thought you had the whole 'tackling other people's partner to the ground' thing all sorted out by now,_ " Neo sarcastically signed to Coco.

"I'm still working on it." Coco's smirk turned to a full on smile. "But enough about me, come here you!" She held out her arms and Neo dashed into them. "Congratulations Neo!" She kissed her briefly on the lips. "I'm proud of you Shortcake." Neo blushed at the nickname, it was Coco's for her, much like Ni was Fox's. "But we can't have you stealing all the spotlight. Come on cottontail." Velvet jumped off Fox and made her way back to Coco, the couple linking hands just as the other pair did.

"Coco? What're you two doing?"

"Shush and you'll find out. So, Detective Velvet here cracked your case earlier."

' _I knew it!_ ' Neo cursed herself for being too playful at times, her teasing gave the game away.

"And from that conversation, we had our own. We decided that we wanted to finish our Mate's Marks and take them to the third stage they can go to. In most places, such an act is essentially marriage. But I wanted to have some visible recognition and have some official feeling to it so, if you two are okay with it, we'd like to exchange our rings at your wedding. That way, we only need to pay for one lot of everything, but it'll be your day. We'd be Mated for Life before that, but to have a Team CFVYN wedding day would be the best. What d'you say to that?"

"As if we'd say anything but yes Coco." The remaining three members all approached and hugged the female couple, happy for their choices and decisions. Velvet looked up at her teammate, who had shown praise but had been otherwise quiet throughout.

"Yatsu, want to say anything whilst we're all here?" He could think of nothing, so instead of bringing the mood down he simply asked:

"Can I bring Jade?" The abruptness and straight-faced way he delivered the question made everyone, himself included, burst out with laughter. If ever there was a better way to repel Grimm, they didn't know. All they knew is that every nest they approached for the rest of the day was nearly completely void of Grimm due to the intense positive emotions driving them away. Sure, that meant they'd have to hunt the Grimm down individually in the future, but their main objective of finding the nests was going really well. They returned to the resort in higher spirits than they left, and immediately went to the bar that was open there. Yatsuhashi invited both Jade and Juno along, but Jade told him that Juno was otherwise occupied, knowing full well that Juno/Juliette had returned to the safety and comfort of her room. The six of them raised a glass and toasted.

"To CFVYN; together now and forever!"

"To CFVYN!"

* * *

Was that too cheesy? It felt too cheesy...

Oh well, it's over now, and I don't really care. It's my story.

Hope you're all enjoying the story as of late. Normally I don't ask, because I feel like a vampire going "if you don't review, I shall die", but I would genuinely be interested to see what you guys are thinking of it all. Are you enjoying the pacing, or the characters? Or don't, I'm not too fussed either way.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	67. Sneaky in White

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Fox wasn't normally up this early, he hadn't been for a long time now. Before, it always used to be to read in the comfort of darkness before anyone else was awake. But ever since he gained the ability to see, the time he was getting up was slowly dropping further and further back to normal sort of times as he had no need to be up early anymore. But there were times he felt like he needed to be up earlier than usual, and today was one such day.

The team had been at the resort for a week now and in that time, they had completely eradicated all the Grimm nests that were scattered around the site. For the most part, they were all relatively easy after the first one they took down, apart from one that was equally as huge and this time they avoided using one of the Grimm as a makeshift bomb, meaning the task was much longer than before. But one thing that Fox noticed a lot was that Yatsuhashi's Aura never seemed to be around whenever he woke up. And when it did eventually show up, it was around Jade's. So, out of curiosity and concern for his brother-in-arms' safety, he managed to pry himself out of bed early, get ready without waking anyone else in the room, and left in silence, sneaking after his friend's Aura when he saw it disappearing down the hall.

After 20 minutes of sneaking after them he had to admit, he didn't expect the pair of them to be coming out to the springs this early in the morning. He was thankful he brought his gown along with him, the breeze combined with the slight low mist on the pre-dawn ground brought the temperature down substantially from what he was used to when they were out during the day, but the gown was so unbelievably good that it recognised the fact that he was cold and started warming up on its own around him.

' _Aah, that's nice_ ' he sighed when the heat first came on, following the pair as silently as he could. Sadly, the gowns were white, so trying to be inconspicuous in a pearly white cloak almost was difficult, but he was managing well - they hadn't seen him, so that was something.

"Are you sure about this Jade?" Yatsuhashi asked, a twinge of worry in his voice at the prospect of them doing something they shouldn't be, especially as he was here as a Huntsman (in-Training, of course, but most people didn't know that last part) and doing this would spoil the reputation of himself, Beacon and of the profession in general.

"Of course I'm sure, there's a reason my card got us in here. It wouldn't let us in if we couldn't." She was referring to the bath house just outside one of the resort's less popular springs, 'The Equinox'. Bath houses were the only real entry to the springs, unless you like climbing over 13ft walls that were sloped in such a way that only people with the ability to stick to walls could climb, and even then, entry to them was regulated via the key card guests were given.

"I am slightly perplexed as to how you got in here though, surely there is a time lock on these bath houses."

"There is, but," she leaned in close to tell him the next bit of information, "I have one of only a handful of Master Cards that overrides all time related regulations. It also means I could, if I so wanted to, let myself into to any room at any time. I'm not that corrupted by this thing yet, I just like to treat myself every once in a while; now is one such time. Now come on, get your swimwear on. I'll meet you spring side." She wandered off to the female changing rooms as he remained where he stood, still confused about how that happened.

"Questions for later", he told himself and went off to get changed.

He was in and out of the changing room in five minutes, wearing nothing but a pair of knee length, firebrick red coloured swimming shorts and his gown, which he had to admit was criminally comfortable in the chill of the pre-dawn. As he approached the edge of the spring waiting for Jade to arrive he could tell the water was warm, if the steam wasn't a dead giveaway as is. He felt the residual heat hit his skin a few metres away from the edge of the pool of water and in his gown, he felt blistering hot so, naturally, he wanted to take it off and stand there in just his swimming shorts and let the spring warm him up. But in a shock to him, the gown reacted to the heat and slowly started to cool down. The fine lining behind the white exterior was infused with Dust and the tiniest traces of "Maiden's magic", as Jade often called it around Maron and the Maiden herself, to help read the surrounding temperature and regulate the wearer's body heat to suit the conditions.

"This thing is scarily good at keeping me content with wearing it all the time."

"I know, it's great, isn't it?" Her sudden appearance behind him scared a scream out of the man, who promptly lost his balance and slipped straight into the spring, the warm water hitting his skin and burning slightly at the sudden contrast of the chill whilst wearing his gown to the heat of a natural hot spring. He resurfaced and came straight out of the spring, standing there with his gown soaked and his skin stained with a red glow from the heat opposite a teary eyed Jade, who had been laughing the entire time he was under water.

"I will ask this of you only once: do not ever sneak up behind me when I am standing right by the edge of any of the springs. This thing was made for me, and now it's ruined from being drenched in the water."

Jade rolled her eyes at his comment, "no it's not. Just take it off and leave it lying over there somewhere; it'll sort itself out." Her gown was already off and under her arm, leaving her in her modest swim dress. It was navy with a simple pattern adorning it in reds and whites, more of the latter colour than the former. It didn't reveal anything, not that Yatsuhashi minded anyway, but it certainly hugged her shape a little. "Now, let's actually _enjoy_ the spring rather than you jumping into it like it was a swimming pool."

"You scared me, my reaction was warranted."

"Sure," she teased, knowing full well he was right. She was in a weird predicament at the moment - she knew that he wasn't into dating in the traditional sense and she was fine with that, but that didn't stop her mind constantly battling her heart on what she should do. Right now, she knew where she stood. How long that would last, only time would tell unfortunately. She eased herself into the spring as Yatsuhashi lay his gown out to dry on one of a small handful of rails designed for holding the gowns they were wearing. Jade didn't use one, opting to instead use the tried and tested method of using the floor. Eventually, the tank of a man returned to the spring and used the natural steps on one side to walk in, his body acclimating as he descended the smooth stone steps.

"How is this one of the least used springs?" he queried, "this place is divine. The spring is lovely, and the surrounding area is beautiful."

"It was also, up until a couple of days ago, a popular spot for Grimm to frequent. If and when Grimm numbers died down to manageable levels in these parts, Maron and Mrs. S. open the gates to the spring and it is available for customers to come and enjoy. But because Grimm numbers had steadily been growing around these parts, the paths remained shut down for so long that people lost interest in enjoying 'The Equinox', fearing that they would get no peace here and Grimm would come and attack them. 'Summer Spirit' is currently the same, what with the mystery Grimm swimming around there at the moment."

"Yes, we are meaning to go there at some point over the next week and try to take it out, or at the very least scout it out - see what it's like and what it can do. It's another Grimm that is undocumented, so it gives us another opportunity to take photos and file reports."

"Hold on, ' _another_ opportunity'? You mean you've fought other undocumented Grimm before, and won?"

The giant raised an eyebrow with a grin, "you sound surprised that we won. But yes, we have battled one before. A Nuckelavee in my hometown of Hai-no Hana."

"I thought those things were just myths..."

"As did we all, but when one comes knocking on your door, you come to realise that if it is a myth, it's one scary looking and very real myth."

Jade shivered at the thought of it, even in the warm waters of 'The Equinox'. She'd heard stories of the creature, none of them pleasant. "Wh... what was it like? Fighting that thing?"

"For me at least, it was exhausting. I did my best not to show it, but I had been protecting the villagers from it for a day or two before the rest of my team arrived. This was back when Neo wasn't actually part of the team."

"You know, you never explained that to me."

"Now seems as good a time as ever." She smiled as he began recounting the weeks that changed all five of their lives forever; over these past days that she and Yatsuhashi had been seeing each other in the mornings or evenings, Jade came to realise their 'conversations' were mostly just her speaking and him listening, chipping in on occasions. It was nice to let him take the lead with talking for a change.

The tales he told were brief in relation to the length they most likely were, but that didn't hinder the fact that they were amazing stories. The green haired woman had to admit, Yatsuhashi and his team had been through a lot, especially in those first three months, but she learnt so much about the team in that time based solely off the stories. To learn that Fox was born blind was a shock in of itself, but everything that followed both amazed and frightened her at the same time; to learn that such a thing existed and that these could happen to anyone. She was no stranger to the weird and wonderful world in which they lived, what with her discovering Juliette and her powers purely by accident a few years ago, but the story her partner told of the Parchment of Volentes and how it attached itself to both Neo and Fox's souls was something completely new and exciting for her.

"So, what happened next? He found you and then what?" Yatsuhashi let out a brief laugh at Jade's eagerness to hear his story.

"Calm down Jade, I will get to it. But this will need to be the last bit, alright? The sun's starting to rise and my team will be up. I don't want them worrying about where I've disappeared to." Unbeknownst to him, Fox was sitting in a tree overlooking the spring, listening to the conversation as best as he could over the distance. He stayed as long as he needed to get an idea of what they were doing and whether she was taking advantage of him, even though to do so would be very difficult considering his size, combat experience and sheer muscle all dwarfed her own. He saw no ill intentions from her, so content with his scouting he hopped down to a lower branch of the tree that was out of the sight lines of the bathing pair and started jumping from tree to tree to get back to the main resort as quick as he could, he still had a bit of sleep he'd like to cash in.

"That's fair enough, I won't ask for more. But go on, tell me what happened."

"So, Coco ordered that the five of us met in the Western Square of the village - it was the furthest we could be from everyone else without leaving the village itself - to combat it. I still remember first seeing that thing walking out from behind those buildings, the sounds of cracking bones and inhuman gibberish were the stuff of nightmares. _It_ was the stuff of nightmares."

"Sounds it."

"Before it appeared, the first thing that happened was Fox came flying over the buildings. It hit him so hard that he soared right across the open space and landed hard on the ground behind us. _That's_ when the creature reared its ugly head. We learnt a lot about that thing in just the first few minutes of that fight - it was fast, strong and the arms on the upper torso could stretch like elastic." Jade gagged slightly at the thought of it. "And what was worse, when it screeched, it hurt your ears. It was uncomfortable for most of the team, but with Velvet it was-"

"Oh my gosh, was she alright?"

"I won't sugar coat it, no. She passed out from pain because the screaming from it was too intense for her. It completely destroyed her Aura, and to do that takes a lot of effort. Coco nearly lost her life on multiple occasions trying her best to protect her. We were fighting for our lives and do you know what Neo was doing?"

"What?"

"She was taking pictures."

The green haired woman guffawed. "You're kidding, right? Pictures?" He let his mouth sit in a line as he shook his head. "Dear Oum, what was up with her head? She's gotten better now, right?"

"I can't say exactly, we haven't done anything like it since, but we do have this new Grimm that we need to try and document when we clear out 'Summer Spirit', so she'll most likely do that if Velvet doesn't."

"Why would you subject yourself to that sort of thing?"

"The long and the short of it is that by providing clear photographs of as-yet undocumented Grimm along with accurate descriptions of its abilities nets a hefty reward. The report we submitted on the Nuckelavee paid for the meal we went out for to celebrate, but all our outfits as well and with plenty to spare. This one could be equally as profitable." With a sigh, he hung his head, "I sometimes wish that I wasn't doing jobs for money and that we were doing it purely to help people much like with Hai-no Hana - we only got paid for the report, and that was a pleasant surprise - but at the end of the day we are human, or Faunus, and we need money to get by."

"Hey Yatsu, don't beat yourself up about it, alright?" The neon green eyed girl briefly swam the short distance between them and came to rest at her partner's side. "Your team and I will always be there for you. You told me you graduate at the end of the year, so once that's done you can do whatever you want."

"Not quite; as Huntsmen and Huntresses, you need to undertake at least 2 years' worth of work before anything else. It's so that the Academies of Remnant can monitor their alumni and see what they've done in that time. After that, _then_ they are free to move on with their lives." He turned and smiled at her, his giant hand finding her own under the water, "I appreciate the sentiment and concern though."

"Think nothing of it. What we should be thinking about though is heading back - sun's breaking over the horizon soon and your team will most likely be up as well. We don't want them worrying about you, because they will."

"I know they will" he commented, finding the bottom of the pool and standing to walk over to the edge. He got out and went for his gown which, true to Jade's word, was no longer wet at all from his impromptu dip in the spring whilst wearing it. "Well how about that? It's completely dry."

She smirked a confident smirk. "See, coming here on the regular for many years means that the knowledge and the ins and outs of the resort will rub off from time to time."

"I assume that hanging around Maron and Juno a lot also factors into that? Or are you trying to take _all_ the credit?"

"Shh! Don't blow my cover."

The tank responded with a smile on his face, "as if I'd do that."

Yatsuhashi took his gown and went to the changing room to return into his morning wear. Jade on the other hand remained in her swim dress as she mentioned how her first stop today was the sauna, so she argued what'd be the point of changing out of her swimwear to go back into her swimwear?

The gentle giant couldn't fault her logic.

* * *

IT'S BACK, BABY!

So, for those who may be reading this for the first time post-hiatus, that will make as much sense as cutlery made of sponge. Allow me to clarify.

On Thurs August 30th 2018, about 8:20AM (local time), I was supposed to upload this chapter. But, the file on my computer came up as 'Unreadable', and try as I might I didn't manage to fix it in time before I had to shoot off to work and miss the day's upload time. I tried again after work and the morning after, but I missed my backup time slot too.

Ever since, I've been trying to get it back, but early on Weds September 5th 2018 the file officially said that it was corrupted. Not only that one, but the subsequent files for chapters 68 - 110 (yes, there are 110 story chapters)

So, ' **Senseless'** had to go on hiatus until I could find my backup draft files and rewrite the chapters again. I'd waited until I was a few chapters in before starting the reupload process, but now I'm back, and it's full steam ahead!

And because I'm feeling a little generous and have been missing my favourite coffee coloured team, let's have the chapter go up a few hours earlier than usual, eh?

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	68. Preference

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

On their walk back, Jade asked one more question of the tall man.

"Yatsu, I'd like to know something. It's a little bit... oh, who am I kidding? It's a _very_ personal question, so I don't mind if you don't answer. But, what made you realise you were aromantic?" His breath hitched at the question and he lost his stride. Jade felt immediately guilty and tried to rectify it. "We don't have to talk about it. I won't say another thing about-"

"No." He was uncharacteristically assertive, a trait she wasn't too sure if she liked, but her body stopped and she listened to what he was telling her. "If we are to be partners, then you deserve to know the reasoning behind my preferences. It is only fair." She nodded, wanting to move closer and comfort him, but she sensed an air of uneasiness around him, so stayed back and let him explain.

"When I was younger, about seven years old, I had a temper like you wouldn't believe. I used to shout and scream and generally be an ass, but one thing my parents and sisters were thankful of was the fact that I was never violent. Until one day, a boy in my class said something to me. I lost it and beat the boy down, hard. After that, I was scolded no end by my Mother, but my Father remained silent to it all. When she had stopped, I was taken up into the mountains with my Father. We survived a month with only a week's worth of rations, focussing mostly on meditation and calming methods to clear my mind of impure thoughts and to help keep my anger under control. I continued that routine of meditation for years.

"When puberty hit me, I believed that the thoughts I was getting of my female school mates were unnatural, so I spent extra time meditating to clear my mind of them, telling myself that those thoughts weren't right. As the years went on I learnt that those feelings and thoughts were indeed natural, but the 'damage', so called, had been done. I no longer felt any sexual desires towards any females, and I never had any feelings towards men anyway. In my final months before I started Beacon I refrained from meditating as I did before and let thoughts go through my mind naturally, and in that time, I saw a few girls that I found physically attractive, but I felt no pull to want or be with them, intimately or romantically. I never questioned it in front of anyone, instead choosing to research it in my own time. I learnt that I was aromantic that way; no romantic love towards anyone else, but not shying away from platonic or non-romantic love. Much like we are now, I'd say.

"I'm sorry if you feel differently to me, but I have no romantic feelings for _anyone_. For me now to think otherwise seems almost an impossibility, and I must admit that I don't want us to cease being each other's partner if we cannot acknowledge that. I enjoy this, it is fun and it is nice to know that there is a certain someone there for me in a non-romantic sense. But I feel all too often that you wish that we could be more, despite my insistence that I never can or will see you any differently than how I do now."

"I..." Jade stopped herself and gave her thoughts a chance to sort themselves properly. "Yes, I do find you physically attractive, I said that. Part of me wishes we could be romantic, I mentioned that too and you were okay with that, as was I when you said that you were aromantic. I still like you that way but I _know_ it would never happen, so I repress those thoughts. I like being with you, you make me happy. Why would I do anything to break that?" Jade failed to hear the low growl coming from the treeline as she continued. Yatsuhashi did, but Jade was too deep into her rant to stop. "You have done a lot for me in this past week alone, how would doing anything against your wishes benefit me? The answer is it wouldn't Yatsuhashi!" She was shouting now, and the growls were growing ever louder.

"Jade... calm down and start walking again."

"No! I want you to tell me something; why did you suggest us being partners if you don't do any of this?" Her emotions, amplified by her semblance, were drawing lone Grimm that had escaped Team CFVYN's sweeps of the ground from all around the place, and it was only when the first Beowolf leapt from the bushes at the pair did Jade realise this. On impulse, she screamed and backed away from the impact zone of the Grimm, only to have Yatsuhashi step in the way of it and, channelling his Aura through to his palms, sent a wave of his own energy through the beast and caused it to explode from the inside.

"Stay close and run!" Once again, he was assertive, but this time Jade didn't hesitate to listen. She took off into a full sprint back towards the resort, using her Aura to increase her speed to help her outrun the beasts. Normally, he'd tell her to ease off, but as he wasn't armed and he too needed to escape, he wouldn't complain too much. Another creature jumped at him from the side and he just punched it in the jaw, knocking it away, before he took off after his partner, his larger legs, greater Aura pool and years of experience letting him catch up quickly. He checked his Scroll and sent an SOS message to his team for assistance before focussing solely on getting Jade out of here in one piece.

"Yatsu, I am so sorry!" she cried with tears falling from her eyes, "I never meant for this to happen. I was just angry and I took it out on you and-"

"We can apologise properly later. For now, let's get somewhere safe." His strides kept him level with the woman, who was using a lot of Aura to get away. "Ease off on the Aura usage Jade."

"What? We're being chased!"

"Yes, and you using your Aura like that _will_ get you somewhere faster, but you'll burn through it much quicker. Remember, it's not only a backup reserve for your energy, it's also like a shield around your body - you have Aura, you can protect yourself somewhat from harm; if you have none then you are just as vulnerable as the next person. Plus, we still have a kilometre to go, at this speed you'll run out before we reach halfway." She glanced back and saw the Beowolves, a newly formed pack of four, currently keeping pace with them both. With a groan of uncertainty, she eased off, slowing down to a more manageable speed. It was still running speed for most people, but with the Aura boost it was achieved with nothing but a heavy jog. The creatures grew ever closer as their speed didn't falter when the green pair eased off.

"Yatsu, they're gaining on us."

"Just keep running. Look forward and keep running. I'll fight them off if I need to, I'm the only one of us who can." He smiled at her, as if accepting his fate. "I'm sorry for doubting you. Promise me you'll keep going, no matter what you here?" She nodded as she ran, tears falling again. "Good. Keep running." The giant jumped slightly then skidded to a halt, forcing as much weight and effort into his front leg as he could. When he had come to a complete stop and all the Beowolves were making very heavy ground on him and Jade, he forced all his energy into that leg and sprung off back towards them with an almighty shout, almost a war cry. As the distance between the beasts and him shrunk very fast, he swung his leg round bringing a powerful knee right into the face of the front most Beowolf, its body already starting to flake and fade away before he'd even come to a complete stop or the black and white corpse hit the floor.

He glanced back at Jade who had turned around and slowed down slightly to see what was going on, but he wouldn't have that. She needed to get to safety.

"RUN!" One of the pack let out a roar and jumped at him, hoping to get a good hit on him as he was distracted, but he was too tuned in to the surroundings now to let something as simple as a juvenile Beowolf get the better of him. In terms of unarmed hand-to-hand combat, he was middle of the road in the team. Fox was understandably first due to the nature of his weapons, Neo coming in second. Velvet only shot up the ranks when she used her semblance to mimic a close-quarters weapon, otherwise she was only just weaker at this sort of thing than Yatsuhashi was. Try as she might, Coco was by and large the weakest in this field of the entire team. Sure, none of them were abysmal at hand-to-hand combat and Coco could hold her own against anyone who tried in something as simple as a basic bar brawl or against one, maybe two, of the low/mid-level Holo-Arena Grimm, but against anyone else with more skill in that field and she'd have the floor wiped with her. Fighting beasts like this for the swordsman was no big deal.

When the beast leapt at him, he spun round and caught its jaws with his hands, holding them open to stop it biting down on him. Being his size came with advantages such as this; if Velvet or Neo tried to do this sort of thing they'd have to use a fair amount of Aura to keep the jaw from crushing them. Although the tank also believed that if she was willing to sacrifice it - which she _wasn't_ \- that Neo would most likely comically prop the beast's jaw open with her parasol. But with him he needed only a small amount of Aura to keep his hands intact and was relying mostly on his sheer size and brute strength, considering how he rivalled the size of the creatures. The struggle lasted a few seconds before Yatsuhashi got a good footing and started pushing back against the beast harder than before. From its reaction, the Beowolf honestly didn't know what to do; not only was its jaw being held open but it was now being walked backwards. The swordsman relented ever so slightly, giving the creature a chance to think it would regain the upper hand. He felt it push against him again, and that's when he flung his arms down and stepped back, using the momentum the Beowolf had provided him to throw it straight into the ground face first. It remained there for all of one second before it started flaking away into nothingness.

As the Huntsman-in-Training was fighting the group, Jade was keeping her word and running. She had tears streaming down her face, she didn't want to leave him alone against those Grimm. She was certain he could handle Grimm, but unarmed, alone and against that many were all thoughts against her partner. The man that, against his wishes and her own thoughts, she most definitely had feelings for. But she knew there was nothing she could do to help him. If anything, her returning would act more as a hindrance to him. She had to keep running.

Sadly, a growl and a pair of glowing red eyes from the bushes halted her in her tracks. Another Beowolf, one not from the pack before - she could tell by the size of it - had found her from her emotions acting like a beacon to the Grimm. Tracking her was fairly easy for them when she was distressed as she was now, but the sheer number of Grimm left on or around the grounds meant that an encounter like this was slim to none.

Guess whose lucky day it is then?

The beast seemed more mature than the ones Yatsuhashi was dealing with, it didn't rush in blindly. This one was very clearly playing with her. It stalked menacingly out of the growth, its form creeping towards her knowing full well that this was its next meal. Tongue licked dark lips as it advanced and, while initially frozen to the spot in fear, the realisation kicked in and Jade started running again, this time not caring about over exerting herself and throwing every last drop of her Aura into her legs to get as far away as possible as fast as possible. The creature gave chase at what seemed to her a scarily leisurely pace, but she was happy she was making ground on it.

Just as suddenly, she felt everything disappear.

"What?!" was all she could say before her legs completely gave way and she tumbled to the floor at full speed, gaining a few cuts on her arms and legs, even a small one on her cheek. She glanced at her hand and saw a jade green crackle of lighting; her Aura was broken and her body was aching from pushing too hard. "Shit..." she muttered looking at the beast again, the distance she'd put on it was sizeable, but she was more than certain that it knew she wasn't going to last long. Part of her thought that this was an interesting last thought to have, acknowledging a Creature of Grimm for its tactical thinking. But the rest of her hated it. She started crying again, harder than before. It's not like it would have mattered, she was dead within the next minute anyway. She screamed at the sky as tears fell and the claws scratched the ground closer and closer each time they landed.

She looked at the beast, her face screwed up in pain, as she accepted her fate. It sensed this and lunged.

"Yatsu!" she cried, hoping by some miracle he'd rescue her in the nick of time. Sadly, she knew that wasn't going to happen.

* * *

CLIFFHANGER!

Gods, I miss using those.

It's a little late in the day, but hey - better than nearly a month late.

Little update for those who are following me directly: I have a new ongoing story as well as this one, written in collaboration with the outstanding **Clementine Davidson** , titled **Three Masters**. It's such a fun project we're working on, and I'd be happy if you'd give it a look.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	69. What? Comics are Good Inspiration

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Someone else beat him to it.

There were a couple of seconds of roaring as the Beowolf went for the kill, but then there was the sound of metal slicing into flesh, then flesh hitting the ground, then nothing - her quiet sobs ever present throughout the whole ordeal. She waited for death to come, but it never did. Her right eye opened in confusion, and in place of what was the now evaporating Grimm stood Fox, offering a hand up.

"Are you alright Ja-" he was cut off by the girl throwing herself into Fox's embrace and breaking down once again.

"I'm so s-sorry! I shouldn't h-have left him there!" she bawled into his shoulder, her death like grip making things very difficult for him to function properly.

"Jade... need to... breathe..." Suddenly noticing her grip, she released him, then promptly collapsed; her legs were in no shape to support her own weight at present. "Now," he puffed, getting his breath back, "where's Yatsu?"

"He was taking care of Grimm further up the trail, up by 'The E-'"

"By 'The Equinox', I know." She looked at him with a puzzled look. "I'll explain later. Do you think you can make it back to the resort?" In an effort to prove that she could, she pushed up on her arms to steady herself before rocking onto her feet to make her way back. The instant weight was put on her legs for support they crumbled like paper.

Sighing in defeat, she let her head drop to the floor. "No..." When he walked over to her, she wasn't sure what she was expecting. One thing she most definitely did not think could or would happen was that Fox would place his arm on hers, flare his Aura and channel his Aura into hers. Immediately afterwards she felt invigorated with this new energy.

"I've given you some of my Aura to sustain you until you get back to the resort. After that, you're going to need either an Aura shot or a lot of rest to get your own back, the latter method taking a little longer, but without the minor side effects of some of the shots. Do _not_ let this run out, you use it sparingly so that you can get to the resort with some still intact. If this runs out on the way there, there is no guarantee my teammates are going to be up to get to you in time." Fear flashed across her face for a brief second at the prospect, but she was not going to let that get the better of her. She was going to get there going at a comfortable speed. "I need to go, Yatsu is going to need my help." Before he could take off to get there, Jade reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him.

"Please," she croaked, her voice hoarse from the running she had just done and the crying and screaming afterwards, "make sure he's safe." Fox looked her up and down, gazing at how she was holding him and how she spoke.

"You have feelings for him, don't you?" She retracted her arm and turned away in embarrassment. After a second or two she nodded, admitting it. "He's not the same sort of person you or I are, Jade. I wish I could provide you with more words of wisdom, but I need to go save him from the Grimm." He turned and took off back towards the pair's spring from earlier as Jade traipsed slowly back to the resort.

The tall man clutched at his left arm, blood dripping through his fingers. Despite being juveniles and overall unorganised, the remaining Beowolves were learning and working together as a pack rather than a mass of individuals. The mass of darkness had grown from what was a handful to what is now close to 20 Grimm, all Beowolves with a single Ursa at the back. They outnumbered him, and where he would only fatigue over time, he'd kill one only for it to be replaced with one that was essentially new and potentially stronger than the last. It was a losing battle, and if the cut her received from that stray Beowolf claw was anything to go by, he was already tiring out - he should have dodged that with no effort, but his mind worked too slowly for his body to register.

Two more creatures jumped at him. The first one he dodged easily, but the second managed to catch him and force him onto the floor. Luckily for the student the beast he was up against was one of the smaller ones in the group, standing much shorter than himself, and weaker too - it just got the edge on him. The struggle on the floor was next to non-existent, as no sooner had Yatsuhashi's shoulders hit the floor he had rolled his hips upwards and kicked the beast over his own head and into his buddies who probably weren't expecting anything like that. Those that weren't currently in that pile of bodies were circling him, lying in wait for him to make one wrong move.

The pain shot through his arm again and he audible winced at the stinging on his left bicep. Seizing the moment, three went in for the attack, one roaring his allies to battle. Yatsuhashi heard that and fought his way through the ever growing pain to fend them off for however long he could last. The first beast was greeted with a knee to the chest followed by a left hook to the face. He regretted that decision not only because of his arm but also because most of a Beowolf's face is bony structure, and that stuff hurts when you punch. It can bounce steel off like it's nothing, a punch must be the equivalent of a light breeze. Fortunately, the force behind the punch not only cracked the armour plate but also forced its way through the white and through onto the black of its skin, knocking it away. He turned around and saw the other two creatures advancing so fast that, in his fatigued state, he would have been able to effectively block any one of their attacks.

As luck would have it, Fox managed to make his way to where his teammate was just in the nick of time. He entered with a diving kick to the front creature, then jumped from where he landed to slice off the second wolf's right arm then its head before finally crossing the distance between the fading corpse and the shocked soon-to-be corpse he just kicked and plunging his blade through the skull, upgrading the Grimm's status from 'soon-to-be corpse' to 'now-a corpse'.

"Need some help Yatsu?"

The giant grinned, "Oh, _now_ you come to help."

"I can always leave if you'd prefer me to."

"You know that I am only teasing you Fox, your help is much appreciated." The pair readied themselves to attack, the group of Grimm that were in a heap had now sorted themselves out and were angrier than before.

"You managing without your weapon?"

"Not really. I have a gash on my arm now from where one caught me, and I feel that both my energy and Aura are pretty low."

"Well, you'll have to-" It seemed to them that the creatures were fed up of waiting for the pair to have their little back-and-forth as they snarled at them and charged impatiently.

"Fox, go for the trees!" On command, the taller boy made the decision to get them the higher ground, and so using their Auras they flung themselves into the trees, Fox letting out a small chuckle at the sight of two Grimm colliding with one another on the ground below. The pair hid themselves in the leaves and let their emotions mellow to nothingness. A few of them looked around for their prey, but what with them moving so fast on the jump and the fact they were suppressing their emotions to the point where their exact locations are scrambled for the Grimm it was a fruitless job.

" _Yatsu,_ " Fox signed, " _do you have enough left in you for a slam?_ "

" _Maybe, but if it doesn't work it would be all down to you._ "

" _I can cope with that, just so long as you take at least six out._ "

" _Is that all, six? You're getting old Fox._ " Fox grinned, taking the joke on the chin, then glanced upwards. Yatsuhashi understood the signal and started to climb. After no more than a minute he was at the highest branch he dared to get to where he could still comfortably stand. "Okay... here goes."

The Grimm on the floor still searched, frustrated at the lack of meat that had suddenly just disappeared from right in front of them. All of a sudden, the tank came hurtling down to the ground with outstanding force. Before he hit the ground, you could see the Aura flowing from through his body into his fist, then as he impacted the ground the shockwave of Aura wiped a lot of the Grimm in the immediate radius and knocked most of the others off their feet. Seizing this chance, Fox leapt down from the tree, blades extending to full reach, and began slicing at the Grimm. Most fell, so their efforts were spent trying to get up rather than looking for the two Huntsmen. Fox cleaved most of their heads off before they stood as it was easiest for him to do so, but on occasion he felt it necessary to shoot a couple that were getting up too quick for him to get to for an up close and personal kill. When all was said and done there was only the Ursa left.

"Hey Yatsu, Fastball Special!"

"...You stole that from that comic you're reading, didn't you?"

"Just toss me!" Despite being the least vulgar of the entire team, the gentle giant could help but laugh at the phrasing Fox used for the sentence. "At the Ursa! Toss me at the Ursa!"

"I know, I was just having some fun." Yatsuhashi got a running start, a painful one at that because the Aura slam he did not 30 seconds beforehand took most of it with him as well as a lot of his energy, and caught Fox by the collar of his vest. He spun the dark skinned boy around twice before throwing him as hard as he could towards the beast, letting his blades extend to their fullest and driving them deep into the Grimm's skull. He kept them there and fell with the beast, letting the body dissolve around his blades.

"Well, that went well," the copper haired boy exclaimed, retracting his blades completely back to their bracelets form before turning around to see his brother and teammate taking a knee and breathing very heavily, good arm clamped around the wound on his bad one. ' _Spoke too soon, Fox._ ' "Yatsu, you alright?"

"Other than the arm, I believe I am okay. I way need some help getting back though, I-" he cut himself off when the pain flared once more.

"The slam took a lot out of you, I figured. You could have said no, y'know," the shorter young man mentioned as he supported his friend's weight on his shoulder, "it would have taken a little bit longer, sure, but at least you would have been able to walk after."

"I can walk on my own now." Fox raised an eyebrow and grinned.

"Really? Well then, I'm going to let go then, I need to grab something from behind the bush over there." He didn't, but he wanted to prove a point. Fox got all of three steps away from Yatsuhashi before the tank fell because of the strain on his legs. With defeat over his face he looked back at Fox.

"No, I can't walk alone." Fox's grin grew in size.

"You two are more alike than you'd think, you and Jade. She tried to do the exact same thing, with more spectacular results though."

"Let's get back to the resort Fox, I need to see if Jade's alright." Fox turned his head back facing forward but, in his mind, he was smiling.

' _He truly does care for her._ '

* * *

Velvet made her way back to Jade's room after she had gone to grab some food for the four girls. To say she was in a bad state when she came in wouldn't exactly be wrong, but it wasn't too accurate either. She was tired from running, not having had any food before she left and when she returned there was very little of the Aura Fox had given her to make it back still there. Neo was on her way out to aid Yatsuhashi, having woken up and started messaging Fox when he was out until the alert was sent out, when she ran into Jade near the front of the resort, prioritising her wellbeing over her male teammates' once she was told Fox was there now. But even as the greenette spoke her voice was filled with doubt and her eyes wet with tears that refused to fall. To her, she'd run away from a friend when they needed help; even when she knew that her running away was the best option, the _only_ option, she felt helpless. To her, these kids (and Neo) were already leaps and bounds above anything she could ever be in life at three years her junior, five years her senior in Neo's case. She was a roadblock to their success and she couldn't feel any different, even if she and the other three girls tried to convince her otherwise. Velvet went off to get the food whilst Coco and Neo sat there and let her vent these feelings, and when Velvet came back with the breakfast they all sat there and talked.

"Thank you all so much," Jade started after the first few mouthfuls of the butter croissant the Rabbit got her, "you are all so kind to me."

"Jade, you were running to the resort with tears in your eyes and almost completely out of Aura, we're going to look after you no matter what" Coco told her, taking a bite out of her piece of toast.

"Besides that, you and Yatsuhashi are together, so we'd look out for you anyway." At that her breath hitched and her emotions were all over the place. Everyone could tell something wasn't quite right, especially as they felt their own emotions going all over the place as hers did - a direct effect of her own semblance. "Jade?" Neo cocked her head as well, the green haired girl's inability to understand Sign Language making it difficult for her to express her thoughts and opinions to the woman without it being translated via one of the other two.

Only Velvet heard Jade mutter "What do I do?" Neither of the other two did as their hearing would never be as acute as hers. Hearing that, she closed the gap and wrapped her arms around the woman and stayed silent, letting the contact speak for her. The green eyed woman spoke her question again, louder and clearer this time, and Coco answered.

"Is this about Yatsuhashi?" Jade nodded. "Is it becoming difficult for you?" Another nod. "Is it something he did?" She shook her head, easing doubt in Coco's mind. She never thought he'd do something like that, but she needed to make sure. Admittedly, Coco had run out of questions. Neo had one, so she relayed what she wanted to say to Coco first. "Do you have romantic feelings for Yatsuhashi?" There was a pause, one where Jade refused to move or speak, she just hugged Velvet tighter.

"Come on Jade," the Faunus said with a smile and a soft tone, "we're your friends here, we want to help you. Do you have feelings for him?" The answer came as words instead of gestures this time.

"Yes, I do."

"Okay. So, what brought this on?"

"The first time we met. It was the first morning you were here and there was a Purple Sunrise - I'm sure there's an official name for it, but it's what _I_ call it anyway. We gelled, and I loved being in his presence. I never had a filter on my emotions really, and now my semblance is there I find it harder to control it all. I like him as more than a friend, but I feel trapped with what to do."

"...Neo asks if he set out ground rules?"

"He did, yeah... Holding hands, hugs and cuddles he is okay with, obviously sex is out... I can't remember much more than that."

"You sounded a trifle annoyed at that last bit," Coco teased.

"...A little bit," she admitted, a decent blush coming across her cheeks, one she decided she'd try to hide under her breakfast croissant.

"What about kissing?" Jade stopped and thought. She didn't recall him saying against kissing, but equally she didn't remember him saying anything for it either.

"I... I don't recall..."

Coco, along with the other two women of her team, knew that he wasn't opposed to kissing if the CAME Games were anything to go by. But they kept that titbit of information to themselves and she offered much sounder advice. "Then you ask that. If that's the one and only thing you can figure out, it may help ease everything else along somewhat smoother by just being one more bit of information."

"Jade, you will need to realise that Yatsuhashi is not going to change just for you." Velvet was harsh and to the point, but frankly it was warranted and needed, especially coming from the one member of the team Jade admitted she thought was the timid one. "You cannot and will not get him to reconsider his preferences, he made up his mind and it has taken him a fair amount of years to get to where he is now, where he is not ashamed of his feelings and thoughts any more. But he will never look at someone in a romantic light ever again, he unintentionally purged that from himself when he was younger. That sort of thing happens in fairy tales, very seldom does it happen in reality. But that doesn't mean _we_ can't help." Jade's puffy eyes looked into Velvet's with confusion and curiosity. Velvet's shoulder glowed, as did Coco's as they passed a feeling between one another. They were on the same wavelength now.

"We don't know how long you and Yatsuhashi are going to be together," Coco admitted, "but in whatever time you are, we can help fill any gaps in your life that need filling."

"Wait, so you mean even... _that_... if I needed?"

"Jade, you're currently in a room with three other women - one of which is Bisexual and the other two are Pansexual - we can help in that department no ends if you're really in the need. Yeah, we might not be the exact thing you're looking for - i.e. we're women, you're into men - but Neo can attest that you just need to find someone who's good and nothing else really matters, right?" The mute signed something that Jade didn't understand, but Coco was there with the translation. "She said that she admits she prefers a guy in bed, but girls know how to push the right buttons that most guys don't, Fox being the exception because of their time together. Now in terms of everything else, we can help with that too. You've got to lean on if you really need, and we swear that none of us would do anything that you weren't comfortable with if you wanted to 'use us', so called."

"You... would do that? For me?"

"Of course! We're your friends. You know that, right?" She nodded. "Then you have nothing to worry about. But I recommend speaking to Yatsuhashi again about this, and if things don't quite pan out the way you want, then you have us girls to lean on." She grabbed the other two by the shoulders and pulled them in, hugging the pair of them simultaneously.

"What about your partners?" the green woman asked innocently enough.

"Coco and myself had already agreed that we were happy for our relationship to be semi-open, so she discusses it with me and I approve or disapprove so I _know_ who she'd be seeing. Fox and Neo are the same, so we'd need to clear it with Fox first before Neo joined in." Velvet turned and smiled sweetly at the older woman, "but I'm saying that I'd be okay for Coco to help, and I'll join in too if you don't mind."

"..." Jade's mouth opened to speak, but no words came to express her gratitude to the three of them. They had selflessly offered to help with anything she needed if it came to it on a whim. She was truly and utterly gobsmacked. "How can three brilliant young women all be together in one place? You're amazing, the lot of you."

"Easy there Jade," the beret toing woman teased, "we've only just offered to help you and you're _already_ trying to flatter your way into our panties?!" The outsider's face glowed with a strong blush, the sight of which caused the other three started laughing, one silently of course. "Jade we're teasing you. We know that you... well, we _hope_ that you're not that crazy. Except for Neo, she gets off to that." The woman in question hit her team leader hard on the arm. As they started laughing again, Jade joined in too, but not long after Fox and Yatsuhashi made their way into the room, swapping the tension from light-hearted to serious in a matter of moments.

"Yatsu!" As room was cleared on one of the beds, Jade was there straight away, assessing the damage. "Yatsu, are you okay?"

"I'm tired, I can tell you that." Her eyes drifted from his face to his arm and she saw the cut there, the skin underneath stained red from his blood. She wanted to scream, a cut like that was nasty, but part of her knew that doing so wouldn't help in any way, so somehow, she managed to repress her natural urges.

"How did that happen?" she asked in shock and horror.

"A Beowolf clawed at me; I was too slow to dodge it, so it cut right through my gown." As Velvet got her personal first aid kit from the bag she brought, Jade got up and started pacing around the room, mumbling something to herself. The sight unnerved the tank. "What's up with her?" he whispered.

"I'm going to go ask her," Fox answered back, "I'll find out." He went from his brother's side to Jade's, her mumbling becoming more audible as he got closer.

"That's not supposed to happen," she repeated, "Juliette said that wasn't supposed to happen."

"Who's not?" Fox queried, keeping his voice down so that only they could hear each other. Well, and Velvet, but it was impossible for her _not_ to hear in a room this size unless you were speaking in a whisper on completely the opposite side of the room or it was Neo talking to Fox in their heads.

"Juliette, she said that that shouldn't happen." The instant the words left her mouth, she knew she shouldn't have said what she did. Her hands clamped to her mouth in fear that something else might be said and her eyes started watering.

"Jade, who's Ju-"

"I wasn't supposed to say that. I betrayed her trust. I'm such a bad friend!" She was going to head down a self-destructive path, he could tell already, so Fox caught her in a hug to stop her from doing anything silly.

"Shh, easy there. Just take it easy and we can talk it through."

"We can't; I wasn't supposed to even know, but then I did, and now I've hurt the trust between us."

"Okay, so how did you find this out then?" he pressed. She seemed to be spilling things almost willingly, so he knew to use that to get deeper into the mystery.

"I eavesdropped. I heard Maron and Juliette talking about something, but I fell and was discovered. They told me not to tell anyone."

"And why is that?"

"Because the information is life changing, world changing. To know these things exist makes everything else fall into place." He was close, so he tried his luck once more.

"What is it Jade? What was it they were talking about?" Her eyes watered more, and she tightened her grip on his own gown.

"I... can't. I _won't_ say. I've already told you more than anyone else should ever know."

' _Damnit, so close._ ' Neo glanced over, raising an eyebrow. ' _Later, with everyone._ '

' _Sure thing,_ ' she answered with a small smile, then returned to helping the other girls with their teammate's injury.

"You were saying things about Juliette, that _this_ shouldn't happen."

"She made the gowns so that they could withstand a Beowolf claw or some teeth because of the risk involved in going to some of the outer springs like 'The Equinox' or 'Summer Spirit'. She somehow manages to weave Earth Dust into the cloth to harden it when it's needed. Something must have gone wrong. That's never happened before."

"And Juliette, she's who exactly? Is this Mrs. S perchance?" Jade closed her eyes and sighed, she was so dead when Maron found out, because she will.

"'Mrs. S' and 'Juno' were pseudonyms. Her real name is Juliette Solstice. She's a-"

"Whoa, whoa, hold up Jade, this isn't an investigation, you don't need to tell me everything. I just wanted to know if Juliette and Mrs. S were linked, which I now know they are. But Juno was a false name too?"

"It was... Gods, I'm such an idiot."

"Okay, you need to stop doing that to yourself. Yes, you said something you shouldn't have, but Team CFVYN don't spill secrets. We have our own little code that we stick to, one of the things on their mentions how secrets are shared with everyone, but from there they go us to our graves. You have nothing to worry about."

"Why must everyone else know Fox? No one else should have known..."

"Just... just trust us, okay?" She nodded. "Good." The other three girls finished working on the tank's dressing for his main wound and cleared up his smaller ones when Jade glanced over at him, a thankful smile gracing her face seeing that he was okay. "Go look after him. You two have some talking to do."

"Thank you, Fox." The young man took his leave, grabbing a single granny smith apple before walking out of the room. He spoke to Neo in his head telling her that the green pair ought to be left alone, something she and the Mates agreed on. Once the door was shut, the pair sat in an uncomfortable silence, the ever present ticking of the clock louder and more noticeable than before.

"I'm glad you made it back alright Jade," the tank admitted, breaking the unease, "I was worried that something would have happened to you when I sent you running."

"Something did happen, it was pretty bad too. Didn't Fox tell you?"

"He mentioned how you had done something that I mirrored later when I tried to stand, but went into no more detail than that."

The woman scratched the back of her head, embarrassed to say, but not wanting to hold back anymore with her friend ('partner' seemed too strong a word right now for her). Even though she was trying to progress, she avoided eye contact - it made everything easier for her. "I ran into another Grimm on the way back, and kind of used all my Aura getting away from it. I collapsed on the floor and I..." reliving the moment and feelings, she finally looked him in the eyes as she finished, "I called your name, hoping you would save me. It seems childish, but in that moment, I felt that you were the one thing keeping me grounded, one thing worth fighting for even though I can't fight. Fox got there as it was pouncing for the kill, then he gave me a bit of his Aura when I stubbornly tried to stand on my own and promptly collapsed."

With a slight chuckle, Yatsuhashi confirmed, "yes, I did the exact same thing." In a move that surprised her, _he_ extended his hand out to her and, whilst she was initially hesitant to reach out, leaving him as he was wouldn't make the next part of the conversation any easier. So, she took a hold of his hand, feeling the warmth from his grip and smiling at his face when she took it. "I feel like we are in need of a long talk about us."

"Yes," she agreed with a teary smile, happy that he was okay, but also that they would have a chance to talk it out civilly, "I believe we are."

* * *

" _No sexual title or suggestive themes for the 69th chapter of ' **Senseless** '?_"

No, there is not.

The fact I even _wrote_ this many chapters still blows my mind.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	70. Quite the View

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Okay Fox, care to explain what you two were talking about?" Coco quietly probed once they were back in their other room away from Jade and Yatsuhashi. Yes, they were only one room apart, but the walls were made in such a way that very little to no sound leaked through - helpful in the 'situations' some couples have when in resorts and hotels and the like.

"I was merely asking her about what she was saying, and she kind of just... opened the floodgates of information onto me."

" _Such as?_ "

"For starters, Juno isn't called Juno. Much like with what you did Neo, it's a cover name, although unlike you she doesn't change her appearance in any way, she just hides it under hoods. Mrs. S is too, but that is more a formal way of addressing her by her real name."

"I thought not-Juno seemed rather nice," Velvet commented, "why would she do something like that?"

"I couldn't tell you Velvet. And her name isn't 'not-Juno', according to her it's Juliette Solstice." The three women nodded at this information.

" _The pseudonyms help explain her behaviour a bit more; secretive, always walked around with her hood up. Even when she did speak to us, it was almost like she was wishing she could stop it at every given moment,_ " Neo's reasons were solid, " _not to mention the fact that she always seemed to be looking over her shoulder, like she was in constant fear that there was someone watching her from afar._ "

"Jade also mentioned that Juliette was the one to create the gowns for everyone, weaving Dust into the fabrics. Normally there's enough Earth Dust in there to harden it and stop a Beowolf claw, apparently, and that this has never happened before." They were sceptical, obviously, but took the information as was presented. "Also, 'knowing that these things exist can change your life and make everything fall into place'. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of what she mentioned at one point."

"So," the leader deduced, "we have a woman of about our age who, judging from what we've seen of her, is being kept here under Maron's supervision, using false names to get by without drawing attention to herself, weaves multiple different types of Dust into the gowns in such a way that it is basically impossible to do unless you are specialised enough in that field and is so secretive to everyone that knowing of her existence is life changing news. What is she?"

Everyone looked around at everyone else, hoping that one of them would have the answer to the question. Fox only knew what Jade had just told him, and the others had very little extra to go on. At this point it was pure speculation as to what Juliette was and what had gotten Jade so worried that she let this all slip. Not knowing what to do, Fox took the first bite of his apple, the crunch of the fruit disturbing the thinking of the other three.

"One thing we can all agree on," Coco mentioned, completely derailing the others' trains of thought, "is that she really does care for Yatsuhashi." That was indeed one thing they all agreed on.

Velvet added to that statement, drawing attention to the fact that "she was a little worried when he came in as he was, but when she saw his arm she full on panicked for a second or two." The Faunus sighed, "she means well, but it is difficult trying get her to realise that our line of work is dangerous, that these injuries happen more often than we'd like."

" _I agree. Look, the day's getting on and we need to get an idea of what we're doing up at the 'Summer Spirit', so I say we go there and think on this some more later. I know it's early, but the sooner the better._ " Coming to the conclusion that it would indeed be more beneficial for all of them, they all got finished their breakfasts, got showered and changed into their combat gear. Coco and Neo went next door to speak to the green pair whilst Fox and Velvet cleared up their breakfast things and took them back to the food court, with the rendezvous point of by the main entrance being agreed on before they went their separate ways.

*knock* *knock* *knock*

"Come in." The two fashion girls didn't need to knock, but equally they didn't want to interrupt anything personal between the pair if they entered the room unannounced. One brown, one Heterochromatic pair of eyes stared at the couple; Yatsuhashi on the bed with his bad arm resting on his chest and his good one down by his side with fingers interlocked with Jade's. "What are your plans Coco?" the giant asked.

"You are staying here, no if or buts on that one. You need to recover, and I'm sure you'll be alright if we say that we wanted you to look after him." She directed the last part towards the greenette, who smiled at the request.

"I was planning on going and having a sauna day, but I guess that can wait."

"Glad to hear it. If you _really_ wanted to, you could make sure his dressings are alright and head off for a few hours, change them, rinse and repeat. He just needs rest until his Aura recovers and does the rest of the work." The woman shook her head.

"I'll be fine with him here."

"Glad to hear it," Coco reassured, wanting no conflict to come of this, "just thought you'd ought to know that we were heading up to the 'Summer Spirit' spring to do recon and formulate the plan of attack. We won't do anything without you big guy, you can literally carry the team at times."

"Ha, ha, I'm a big guy and you are all small and weak, I've heard that one before."

"We are not weak, Daichi; you have tried to lift my weapon when its unfolded and you admitted that you struggled a bit."

"Not because of the weight of it, but the awkwardness of the handles for me. I'm used to a single handle at the bottom of the blade."

"Yeah, well maybe once you've healed up nicely you can try again, properly this time!"

" _When you're quite finished, ladies_ " Neo butted in.

"Right," Coco said, collecting herself from her little playful banter tangent, "just stay safe in here and talk out what you need to. I know you have a lot." The pair of them nodded, then Coco and Neo grabbed what little stuff they and their partners had in this room for the day and left without saying much more, the door clicking gently behind them as they left. Yatsuhashi averted his eyes from the door to Jade and after a few seconds Jade looked back at him.

"Is there anything you'd like to do, knowing I have the day to recover?"

"Now that you mention it," she replied, raising her hand to cup her chin, "I recall you mentioned about how good of a cuddler you were."

He laughed at that. "Yes, I have been told as such, but I am not one to brag anyway." She got up from where she was by his bedside and scooted herself onto the bed.

"I'd like to test this claim."

"Alright then."

* * *

The 'Summer Spirit' spring wasn't as far away from the resort as 'The Equinox' was; as one of the previously most popular springs on the resort you wouldn't exactly want to be trekking miles across the land to get there. Even taking the hike into consideration, and the fact that they were going there purely for work rather than R&R purposes, they were not complaining.

Well, mostly.

'Summer Spirit' was situated near the top of one of the highest natural plateaus in the resort, so the walk there was mostly an uphill climb. From the resort entrance you walk through roughly a kilometre of lush green woodlands before reaching the base of the mini mountain, where there was the bottom of the waterfall from the higher point cascading down into the lake at the bottom, called 'The Harvest' Lake. The sight alone was magnificent and one that they would gladly come back to once they had completed their task. Sadly for them, 'The Harvest' had to be heavily monitored ever since the incidents up at 'Summer Spirit' kept occurring, to the point where eventually it was cornered off from the public use to eliminate any chances of things going wrong about the time when Team HLQN were eventually found. That didn't stop people going on walks around the lake, but many were confused and angry at the ownership's reasoning behind the restriction of access to it - it was a natural 90 metre waterfall and lake, not a man-made attraction, so it was within everyone's right to go in. Those people were a), reminded that they were on the grounds of 'The Four Season Springs' Resort and, as such, they would obey by the rules that were enforced there and b), hastily deterred when an ominous and inhuman sound came from the rocks.

Past 'The Harvest' and following the beaten path two thirds of the way up the mountainside, then forking off at the fourth sign along the way through some now thick brush brought you to 'Capricorn Ridge'. It was an accessible (painfully so because of some of the fauna in the way) outcrop of rocks on the side of the mountain just out of the way past where most paths could see, so you would only know about it if you had prior knowledge of it, which they did thanks to Jade. And the view was stunning. The view expanded far towards the horizon without a single structure in the way except trees and the occasional hill in the far distance, the waterfall audible and just barely visible on their far left. It was serene; if not for the fact that a Creep decided it wanted to try its luck and sneak up on them. Neo managed to catch it before anyone else could get hurt, killing it with a blade through the back of its neck and out its mouth. But when the second one came along she knocked it down with a closed parasol and proceeded to beat it for ruining a perfectly nice moment with her closest friends and her boyfriend. It eventually died, but not before being subject to many blunt object traumas.

After that, they continued up to 'Summer Spirit', and boy were they in for a treat. Reaching the bath house up there they could already tell that it was going to be good, there was just something about it. Walking through to the spring side, they were right. The bath house itself was on the North side of the spring, but that was the only side that was obscured, meaning that the entire day from sunrise to sundown the water was in constant sunlight. There was a rocky alcove on the right of the bath house that went into the side of what was left of the mountain, as there was only another 10m or so to climb before you were at the very top of this part of the resort, a place called 'The Maidens' Blanket'. The spring extended out to the right into the alcove, and left ever so slightly, leaving a large enough area that people would have often laid their blankets down on to relax. The South side is where the beauty really showed.

"Holy shit..." Coco managed to let out, her entire being in awe with what she was seeing. The South side of the spring dropped naturally ever slightly down to a smaller pool, merely a glorified puddle a couple of metres below, before falling off into the waterfall they daw from the bottom into 'The Harvest'. The view expanded out to cover the entire resort and then some, the light roofs of the main resort's buildings reflecting the sunlight off them and making it shine like a gem in a sea of treetop green. The only indication that the second pool below them wasn't natural came from the odd sounds that were made when the water hit it. When they gave it a closer inspection they saw that there was in fact a mini metal ledge down there with some small machinery that was working surprisingly quietly. That, or the roar of the waterfall was much louder than it. The quartet first thought that having a generator behind the waterfall was odd, but when they saw the thing it was most likely powering they backed off their assumptions and went with it. There were two posts on either side of the sheer edge of the water, both as far out as they could be, made completely of metal and powered by the generator. A faint haze covered the front of the window to the world that was the top of the 'Summer Spirit' waterfall, one that was arguably unnoticeable until it was pointed out to you or you were actively looking for it. Neo found a stone and chucked it at the window, and it passed right through. She then walked up to one of the edges and tried to put her hand to it.

"Be careful Neo!"

' _Don't worry about it, I'll use my non-dominant hand._ ' He rolled his eyes at his girlfriend's disregard for her own health sometimes. She managed to touch the invisible barrier; it felt almost like an invisible wall of jelly that was impossible to break through.

"That's a Bio-Shield," Velvet commented, "it must be in place to keep anyone from falling off. These are expensive to own, let alone maintain." Bio-Shields were a recent innovation that brought in a lot of revenue and made the inventor of them unbelievably wealthy; not bad for a small time inventor from the Vacuo deserts. They were calibrated to let inorganic matter like metal or rocks or the like through, but recognised the general signature of skin and acted like a wall, pushing back against it and preventing it from passing through. Considering the drop on the other side of the glass, mini pool not included, was easily close to 80 metres, utilising this technology was the best option for all involved.

"Okay," Fox said, the shock of the view finally wearing off enough for him to form cohesive sentences, "another thing we can add to this Juliette's list of mysteries is that she is either super rich, or she knows and is very friendly to someone who is." Other than the Bio-Shield, its generator and the bath house, everything about the place was completely natural.

"Coco," Velvet mentioned to her Mate, "if we were ever going to do things the human way and get married, I'd want you to propose to me at a place like this." The fashionista smiled, walking up to the Faunus and wrapping her arm around the smaller woman's shoulder. Their shoulders glowed as their Marks sent feelings from one person to the other.

 _Adoration._

"If we were doing things the human way, I'd _want_ to propose in a place like this. I mean, look at it!" They gazed out towards the horizon, a picturesque blanket of sun washed greens and blues, the shimmering water below glaring slightly into everyone's eyes making the whole thing look like a dream scape. "How a Grimm could ever get here when there must be so much positivity surrounding this place is beyond me."

"Which is what we came here for," Velvet reminded her, "not to stare at that postcard-prefect view."

"See Velvs, even you can get distracted by it" Fox teased, bringing a slight blush to the Faunus' face and made her hide behind her hands. Neo's lips curled upwards into a half smile, then she moved forward, took out her Scroll and snapped a few photos.

' _It'll last_ _longer._ ' She gestured to her remaining two team members _"Now everyone, huddle up_!" They obliged, as did Fox, getting close together to be part of the photo. With a click of the button, they all inspected their shot and were thoroughly impressed by the image - it contained all four of them and the view behind.

"Now that we've got the tourist part out of the way," Coco reminded them again as they walked back to the bath house, "let's get the Huntsman part started. We'll split off in pairs and try to cover as much ground as we can. Leave no stone unturned, we need to see if we can get any traces of that Grimm and then we work from there. Fox, you and I will go to the left side, see what we can see that seems a bit abnormal working along the path. We'll drop back down to 'Capricorn Ridge' and work our way back up. You two, go high and right; start on 'Maiden's Blanket' if you can get up there, then come down and see what you can see around this area. We need to check everything, but I have a feeling that we may get our answers in this area. Everybody got their comms?"

"Got mine," Fox said through his earpiece.

"Me too," echoed Velvet.

"Good, all sounds right for me too..." she glanced quickly at Neo. "Why aren't you speaking through your comms, Shortcake?" Her reply was simply her sticking her tongue out at the caramel coloured leader, who smirked at the response. After that, the mute tapped her ear twice, showing Coco that she had her earpiece in any way to hear the conversation, a gesture she acknowledged. "Alright, split up and meet back here in 2 hours. Radio in anything that looks a bit suspicious, we'll make a note of it and come back to it down the line." The four parted company and went their separate ways. Neo took Velvet's hand and ran towards the waterfall, confusing all three other people present. She then jumped, taking the now-screaming Faunus with her and disappeared between the mass of cascading water and the shimmering shield protecting anyone from jumping down the waterfall, the scream stopping suddenly.

"At this point, you'd think I'd stop worrying about her doing things like that," Fox commented straight faced to Coco as they both looked at where their respective girlfriends just disappeared from sight, "but I can't stop myself from getting worried every single time." His Scroll buzzed.

 **N - 'We're on The Maiden's Blanket and we'll work down from here. Velvet didn't like the journey too much :p x'**

 **'** _ **1 file attached. Click**_ _ **here**_ _**to view**_ **'**

Fox opened it up to see Neo taking a selfie with a giant grin on her face. Besides that, there was a green looking Velvet in the background, ill from the 'sudden displacement in reality' as she liked to call it, flipping the ice cream girl off for doing that sort of thing knowing full well her body can't handle it like she or Fox could.

"Of course, she'd do that..." he muttered to himself as he showed his leader the image and corresponding message.

"Hey, you're the one thinking of marrying her, you've got to deal with that sort of shit for the rest of your life," the gunner told him as she made her way through the bath house and out to the path, "so don't come running to me when that thing happens on the regular."

"I'm willing to live with that sort of crazy," he replied with his head held high. With a playful smack on the arm and a smirk, Coco ushered him along back down the path they came from. Unbeknown to them, a dark being watched them from the shadows, its multiple red eyes glowing as it watched its potential next bit of prey walk away.

* * *

{END OF PART 7}

* * *

~ooh, what could that thing be?~

Not telling, so keep reading and find out :P But of course, glowing red eyes - it's a Grimm.

~But which one?~

Part 7 is a wrap - sorry this part was so all over the place, lots happened both at work and at home, and I needed to take that break near the end of it to recover the files for the story. That's done, so it's all good now.

See you all in Part 8, and finally get around to figuring out what has been plaguing the Resort.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	71. Feelings?

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Yatsuhashi flinched as the wrap around his arm was removed, ripping a small bit of dried blood that was scabbing off with it, the pain drawing out an intake of breath.

"I thought you said it wouldn't hurt you" Jade teased, dabbing the small spot where blood had come to the surface again with a small bud of cotton wool.

"It didn't 'hurt'," he shot back, "was just mildly uncomfortable."

"I'll believe you Yatsuhashi, many others wouldn't."

"Thank you for that vote of confidence." She just smiled in response, tending to the dressing. She was shocked at how fast something like that healed, but he reminded her that Aura helped speed up healing injuries providing there was Aura to spare. If you ran out, without a resupply of it you'd be as weak as a person of your size and weight without their Aura unlocked, with all the drawbacks too, and you would be waiting for it to recharge to at least 50% before it started working on healing the owner's body. It was why Jade was still feeling the after effects of running here and had much worse looking but smaller cuts on her knees - thanks in no part to the fact she was wearing nothing but a gown and a swim dress - whereas Yatsuhashi was beginning to heal the giant slash on his arm substantially in the same amount of time.

"I bet this will scar up quite nicely too" the greenette commented, finishing the wrap of bandage around the cut.

"Not really, given how much my Aura is working on it."

"How could something like this _not_ scar?"

"Well, besides the fact I'm focussing my Aura and working it pretty hard on getting it healed as fast as possible, it was just a slice from a Grimm claw. They generally don't scar as bad as weapon scars."

"But then, what about Fox' scars? Were they all weapon scars?"

"They..." he sighed, "they were and are mostly scars from Grimm, but Fox is different. Being blind meant that he couldn't really see how sever his injuries were until they were pointed out to him, by that point they were too far along to heal up properly. Coupled on top of that with the fact he has a slight Aura deficiency. He certainly doesn't lack the amount of Aura as anyone else, but it is weaker than he often likes to believe at times. The same sort of hits on me or Coco would take more of his Aura away if he didn't know where to block and let it hit him out of the blue. He has a lot of scars because honestly, he has fought more demons than any of us have combined, save maybe Neo, and they are the proof of his struggles." Jade's head lowered, slightly ashamed of bringing the conversation topic up without the person in question in the room.

"He wears them with pride though," the gentle giant continued, "he hates them - some more than others - but that sort of hate he only shows to his teammates and family. To everyone else, he is proud of his scars. They are, to him, proof that he had fought in many battles and come out the other side with his life still intact."

"I guess that's... sound logic" she admitted half-heartedly. Yatsuhashi cocked his head slightly to one side.

"Something seems to be bothering you still. What is it?" She had to tell him. Properly this time, not skirting around the facts with him. Unlike earlier, she was in control of her emotions and was in the right frame of mind, and as such knew exactly what she was saying to him.

"I betrayed someone. I was given trust by someone and I shattered that trust; I don't expect them to look at me the same way again when they find out that I let their secret out." Yatsuhashi ushered for her to sit on the bed again, lying down next to him. Judging from her small smile, he was right about one thing earlier; he was rather good to cuddling with.

"I'm here to listen to you Jade. Unload what you feel you need to."

Before she started, she felt the need to mention something. "Yatsu?"

"Yes Jade?"

"You are good for cuddling" she answered as she moved her body closer to him. The man couldn't help but let out a little giggle, then let her start talking.

"How much did you hear when Fox and I were talking earlier?"

"Honestly, not a lot. I knew you were talking, but I couldn't tell you what about."

"Okay, then I'll start from the beginning. About a year ago, it might have been two, I was walking around when I heard Maron and two other people talking about something. I couldn't make out what it was initially, so I moved closer and closer until I could. They were speaking about something this other person had done very recently. I turned the corner and saw Maron with a girl and an old looking man. The girl I now know to be Juliette, and the man was your Professor Ozpin."

"Ozpin?" he clarified, which she nodded at. "I have to say, I'm not 100% surprised he'd be involved in something like this."

"Well, I believe what they were talking about was very personal, so I tried backing away, but I didn't make it very far. Somehow Ozpin was waiting for me around the next corner and asked me how much I had heard of their little conversation. He's actually quite terrifying when you catch him in a bad place."

"Agreed."

"After that, I was almost drafted in to help with whatever they were doing as a part-time thing. See Ju-" she stopped herself, having second thoughts about if this was the right thing to say or do. "Promise me that what I tell you never leaves us. Please." He nodded. "No, I need to hear you say it."

"Jade, I promise that I won't ever tell anyone else about what you tell me."

"Not even your team. I told them part of it, but not everything. There can't be too many people knowing about this."

His initial hesitance was evident, but eventually he agreed. "Not even the team."

"Thank you... Juliette had recently become a Maiden; the Summer Maiden to be precise." Yatsuhashi's brown eyes shot wide open at that realisation, but he kept his mouth shut so that she could continue - there was bound to be more for her to unravel. "The previous Maiden had passed not moments before and Juliette had personally volunteered to become the new 'host', per se, of the Maiden's powers. In doing this, she had forfeited her freedom in exchange for those powers, a realisation she only had about a month ago. Ozpin was there because he seemed to know a lot about the Maidens, and Maron was there because, as I later found out, the previous Summer Maiden had started this resort years ago and Maron was there from the start. When the previous woman, a woman named Lapis Luna, had become deadly ill, the only person she could call on at the time was Maron. Ever since, Maron had looked after Lapis right until the day she passed, at which point she instead started looking after Juliette. My 'job' was/is to keep Juliette happy and away from loneliness, as Lapis was supposedly gravely so. When I did see her back as a child, which was very uncommon but not completely rare, she _did_ look massively upset at all times."

"It must have been a very hard life on her."

"I imagine so. Juliette's been okay for the most part. From what I could tell, the other Maidens chose much different lifestyles. One travels constantly, never staying put for more than a couple of days before moving on; another one of her sisters travelled far away and lived in complete solitude with only her imagination to keep her company. Lapis chose something like this to throw anyone off the track, a life of normality for a being so indescribably not so, and Juliette had followed suit. But she couldn't stay Juliette forever. So, she used other names to hide her true one. 'Mrs. S' and 'Juno' are both false names for her." Yatsuhashi's eyes widened again.

"I spoke to a Maiden?" A small smile graced Jade's lips.

"Life changing stuff, isn't it? But there's more." Now, he was hooked on this story and wanted to know everything he could. "The Maidens have amazing, almost otherworldly, powers and control over the elements. These gowns were made by Lapis, and eventually Jade, using those powers and weaving the smallest amounts of magic into the fabric. That's how your body temperature can be kept at a pleasant level, and how it can dry itself, and how it was supposed to be able to block claws by using the Earth Dust, but somehow yours didn't come out quite right."

"I do not care about that Jade. It happened, and frankly I wasn't expecting my gown to be able to do that anyway." He sighed, letting everything sink in. "Was that everything?"

"Everything I think you'd need to know, yeah. I trust you, Yatsuhashi. I like you, more than a friend if that wasn't already evident, and I trust you completely."

"I know Jade," he mentioned as he hugged her tighter, "I know. Thank you for trusting me so, but I feel I must ask; why can't anyone else know about the Maidens?"

"Ozpin told me that the more people who know, the greater chance that the power hungry would come after them. Keeping their existence hidden from the world saves them from having to run forever."

"You mentioned that one of the Maidens already does that."

"She does that by choice, not as a matter of necessity. She moves from place to place to keep her safe and to keep her mind from frying through boredom. Every week she arrives somewhere new and does something new because she wants to."

"And is that why you have access to everywhere?" he inquired, pieces of the intricate puzzle slowly being pieced together more and more. "Repeat visitors may get some perks, but none would be as extensive as a Master Key. You got that because if Juliette wanted or needed something in a hurry you could get it yourself, because you're her one true friend in this entire resort besides Maron, and you need to be able to do anything you needed to without having to rely on Maron or any other member of staff to open and close doors for you on a whim." Whilst she felt irked at the fact he figured it out so fast, a sense of relief that filled her overcame the feeling of irritation, so much so that she let out a well needed laugh. "Why are you laughing Jade?"

"You figured it all out so fast; it's a wonder I haven't spilled the beans to every Tom, Dick and Harry that walks in this place." The last part felt like a stab at herself, so Yatsuhashi decided in that instant that he would spin it so that it wasn't all on her head.

"Yeah? Well, I bet you haven't been this comfortable with any Tom, Dick or Harry though, have you?" She paused, only giving merit to the tank's statement with every passing second.

"Valid point."

"You have kept the secret hidden very well Jade. No one can or should fault you there. When you told Fox, you were panicking and blurted it out because it was something closely associated with Juliette. But with me, you trusted me enough to tell me this information of your own accord. I've promised you that I won't tell anyone else and I will stick to my word." He pulled her tighter, cushioning her in a firm but gentle hug. The green haired woman all but melted into the embrace.

With a smile on her face, Jade joked that "for someone who has no attraction to anyone, you sure are good at hugging. Have you been practicing?"

"I have. But not out of choice sometimes; Coco can be very clingy to anyone when she gets drunk, especially in the colder months, so let's just say I've learnt to be a very good blanket."

"It shows" she sighed as she huddled in closer still.

"And just because I do not experience romantic attraction doesn't mean I can't be good at hugging, it just means that most of the time I feel nothing from it." Green eyes stared at him perplexed at that comment.

"What do you mean ' _most_ of the time?'"

"There are a few occasions I have felt something in my teenage and adult life when hugging someone - I don't count childhood because I did not know about my orientation back then. On a couple of occasions, I have hugged someone and felt relief from knowing they are there now, mostly my team after a two-handed mission that took slightly longer than anticipated. I have felt sadness in a few hugs when Fox died, understandably. And right now," he looked down at her, brown eyes locking onto green with such kindness behind them, "I feel proud. Proud at the fact that the person in my embrace right now is such a strong and resilient woman, with such a kind heart, and a beautiful smile to boot. And that this person sees me as I am and accepts it, because she truly cares for me as I do for her." Jade's blush couldn't hide even if she wanted it to, her entire face was lit up with a healthy red glow at his nice comments. She smiled at him, and he smiled back at the fact he had made her happy.

In a move that shocked him though, she leaned up cupping one of his cheeks and gave him a dainty peck on the lips.

"Thank you Yatsu. I do really care for you." And with that, she curled up into his embrace one last time, huddling into his warmth.

The tank lay there in confusion. It was such an unexpected action for her to take even knowing that he feels nothing from it, but she did it anyway. He had no way to describe how he felt, because he had never experienced a kiss like that before. Sure, he'd kissed his team before, but that was because of the CAME Games, there was nothing behind any of the kisses (at least not towards him, Coco and Velvet on the other hand...) but here there clearly was. His head hit the pillow and his eyes drifted shut as he tried to let everything sink in.

Nothing was clear at all in his mind, except one tiny thought.

' _That felt kind of pleasant._ '

* * *

Going to be honest here, not known many / any Ace/Aro's in my life. I'm going off representation I've seen in other stories that _have_ had Ace/Aro people in their lives to fact check everything. Sorry for misinterpretation and potentially bastardising a community.

Side note though, **I'M GOING TO MCM LONDON COMIC CON BIYATCHES!** It's why the upload's a little earlier this week - I leave quite early in the morning, I haven't paced, and I might most probably definitely forget to upload. **AND RWBY VOL 6 PREMIERS ON SATURDAY!**

Boy, t'is shaping to be a glorious weekend. Hope yours goes just as well, even if you aren't doing anything.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is mostly appreciated.


	72. First Encounter of the Terrifying Kind

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

A dark and unexplained mist drifted over the area as CFVN regrouped back at the bath house by 'Summer Spirit'. Coco was already waiting there with Fox as their respective girlfriends walked through the building to meet them.

"Anything?" the tan skinned boy asked.

"We couldn't find anything," Velvet admitted, "all the nooks and crannies we looked in up there had nothing. The view was pretty spectacular; if it weren't for the fact I had to throw up soon after getting there, I would have taken a picture to show you." The Rabbit glared at the tri coloured perpetrator to her side, who innocently smiled, swapped her eyes so that they were both pink and cupped her hands to make a little heart shape for the woman.

"I thought you'd gotten better with that Velvet" her girlfriend mentioned as she came in for a hug.

"I _have_. But normally I'm at least a tiny bit prepared to teleport. But being dragged off a waterfall and then teleporting whilst we were in that brief freefall meant that I was already panicking before we'd even jumped locations, so it was naturally going to end with my breakfast on the floor." Coco didn't glare at Neo like her partner did, rather she just looked disappointed at her older teammate. At the gesture, the mute's head drooped in shame - she only wanted to have a bit of fun. "What about you two," Velvet asked, moving the subject away from herself and Neo, "did you find any traces of it?"

"We tried every route along the path down, took every turn, yet we drew blank after blank."

"Whatever this Grimm is," Fox continued from Coco's feedback, "it's either making long treks to get here and do what it does, or it's extremely good at hiding."

" _Or it's in somewhere we haven't looked yet._ "

"Neo we've searched everywhere. Where could this thing possibly be if not up here?" Pink and brown eyes looked directly at the three of them for a few seconds, hoping that they could piece together what she thought was obvious and right in front of them. Sadly, they did not, so with a roll of her eyes she gestured backwards towards the one place none of them did check.

"The alcove..." Velvet said, piecing it together.

" _If it's not in there, then I have one last option that no one will like, so let's hope it doesn't come to that._ "

"Neo, you're a genius!" Coco cried, grabbing her and hugging the shorter woman. As Neo started signing again, Velvet looked around them and was the first to notice the dark mist obscuring their surroundings.

" _Well, you're the one who's meant to come up with the brilliant ideas as our_ _ **leader**_ _, not me,_ " she teasingly signed after being let go. _"And don't go celebrating just yet, it may be empty._ "

"Neo, when have you ever done anything that turned up with poor results?" The woman pondered, trying ever so hard to come up with something, anything, to prove the leader wrong. She couldn't do it. Neo shook her head, admitting defeat, but honestly not feeling too bad about it. "Exactly; no matter what it is you do, you always manage to get a result out of it, so come on." The fashionista adjusted her beret and started walking towards the alcove, an accomplished feeling mute and her boyfriend hot on her tail.

"Coco..." Velvet called timidly, barely audible over the perpetual sound of cascading water to their left.

"What's up cottontail?" Velvet said nothing, instead opting to gesture outwards. "What's out the-" Coco lowered her sunglasses, her world becoming brighter once the lenses were removed from her eyes to get a better view of the horizon. Well, lack thereof. "The fuck?!" They all turned to see a black, Grimm-like mist encroaching on them all from Oum knows where.

"It drifted in suddenly. I don't know where it's coming from, but it doesn't look good and it's moving fast."

"No kidding. Velv, come on!" The caramel haired girl extended her hand out for her Mate to grab a hold of, not wanting her to be anywhere near whatever it was. It was closing in on them fast, leaving very little of their surroundings clear. They all stood with their backs to each other, circling around a point and hands on their weapons in case anything wanted to attack through the near opaque wall of darkness.

"Coco, a plan would be good right about now!" Fox said, panicking slightly.

"I'm thinking Fox; this is completely new, so I don't have anything I can draw on." The quartet's visibility dropped to 5 metres, and even then, that benchmark was passed in a matter of seconds.

Velvet cried out, saying that "there's no way out of this!"

"I know!" the gunner replied, an air of defeat already in her voice, "but we've got to-"

" _~Neo~_ " Everyone froze where they were.

"You all heard that... right?"

' _Fox, what the fuck was that?_ ' the mute asked, genuine fear in her inner voice as she hugged her boyfriend's arm, her parasol brandished in her other hand.

"No idea Neo, but we have to stay together no matter wha-"

" _~Fox~_ "

"Okay... _that_ is terrifying!" The mist was calling their names, the voices sounded so alluring and friendly, but anything like this was everything _but_ friendly.

" _~Fox~_ " it repeated. Neo gasped, recognising the voice now.

' _Viola... this... this must be the Grimm they fought._ '

"Guys, Neo says this might be that Grimm. That was Viola's voice." The voice echoed around them, not only mimicking Viola's voice, but now Nylan's, Quentin's, Lulu's.

"The entirety of Team HLQN... it caught them, so it's using their voices as traps to lure us in." Neo opened the camera on her Scroll and took a single photo of the mist, hoping that she could start documenting it. The flash caught something none of them were prepared for. Through the darkness, a silhouette of what they believe to be the Grimm they were after stood there, stalking up to them. The beast appeared to stand nearly 6ft tall, and that seemed to be just the body of it. From its body protruded seven near identical tendrils that waved about the place, and at the very front was a larger protrusion that looked almost like a mouth. Its head appeared round like a saucer, and its eyes glowed ominously red when the camera flash hit them. From the flash, Neo, Coco and Velvet saw ten eyes staring back at them. The sight of the best frightened screams of terror from the girls as they backed off from where they saw it.

"Get to the alcove! Now!" ordered Coco, hastily ushering the other three onwards before making a break for it herself. The Grimm just continued to advance slowly, its entire body still masked by the mist surrounding the place - all except its ten beady eyes staring right at them all.

The four students were puffing and panting when they made it past the mist screen in the alcove and, for all the girls, coughing as well. Normally a run like that wouldn't tire them, but combining the exercise with an adrenaline rush from being petrified by that Grimm that was now wearing off meant that they could do nothing more than pant. Fox was about to speak when the monster roared at them. Its sound was unlike anything they'd ever heard; it wasn't like any of the normal Grimm, nor was it painfully screechy like the Nuckelavee, but rather it was otherworldly. It sounded like a combination of a bird warbling, a clicking from a dolphin and a roar, and the combination of those sounds sent chills down the smaller two girls' spines. Fox's face crunched up, something seemed familiar about that sound.

Rather than dwell on that, he stated another fact. "It's going to be waiting for us, so if there's no other way out then we've already lost."

"Well, we know it's there, so that's something. We don't know how many of those there are, but I've rarely seen more than one Anomaly Grimm in one place at a time. And because we know those two things, then we only have one option for moving. We need to head deeper into the alcove, hopefully find something interesting."

"Are you insane Coco?!" her Mate cried at her, "I don't want us to d-die because of your curiosity!" Tears started forming in her brown eyes and Coco couldn't stop Velvet from bawling into her shoulder. "I was scared Coco. I was so, so sc-scared. That thing was terrifying and I d-don't want to die Coco!"

"Velvet..."

"If you die, I won't be able to do anything Coco. I love you too damn much to lose you, to replace you! I never could do that!"

"Velvet, sweetie, come on. Would I _ever_ let something like this take you from me? Or me from you? We're in this 'til the very end." Velvet let out one single chuckle as she continued to cry, less intensely than before, but crying all the same. "I heard that" Coco mentioned with a smile.

"It's true though," she managed, wiping a few tears away.

"Didn't doubt you for a second" Coco replied as she kissed her little cottontail between the ears. "And besides, I felt that you were being genuine anyway."

"Sorry..."

"Don't apologise Velvs, it's not a bad thing that-" a tentacle crashed against the wall right by the entrance and that signalled that their little pitstop time had come to an end and that they needed to dive deeper into the cave in hopes for answers and/or a way out. What they didn't see was the creature melting away into the spring, removing the mist from the area and bringing the blue sky back but conversely staining the blue water a deep inky black with its form, leaving only a lump of yellow floating down the stream of black into the darkness.

The pools of water on the floor littered the path that they were taking. Every step caused a splash, and every splash echoed around the place. The alcove dropped down to another smaller pool of water that glowed with an eerie green light from the bioluminescent algae growing at the bottom of it. The fashionista marvelled at the sight, taking a break to wash her face with the water.

' _This feels wrong,_ ' Neo mentioned to Fox, ' _we have to get out._ '

' _Agreed._ ' - "Coco, Neo says we can't keep going this way, we need to leave."

"I'm trying to find us a way out, but similarly we need to find whatever is going on with that thing. We know it can mimic the sounds of HLQN, but why them? That's why we need to go deeper."

" _But something seems amiss Coco_ " Neo replied, 'speaking' for herself this time. " _This whole place seems weird to me and I'd rather leave now and come back later._ "

"But we're here _now_ , why not try and get something done now? Just to see what that thing does with the people it captures, because if HLQN and Jade's parents are anything to go by, it doesn't kill. But why?" Neo hated not getting her way, so she crossed her arms and sulked slightly. "Neo, we'll be as quick as we can, I promise. I just want to see what's going on." Coco got up to try and reassure the mute, but the tri coloured woman pushed past her and walked deeper into the cave network that they had now entered. Fox went after her immediately, Coco and Velvet brought up the rear after a few seconds to give the other couple a bit of a head start, the Faunus huddling right up to her Mate a jittering mess.

"Ni, what is up with you?" he asked, catching up to her. She stared at him, fire in her eyes like he'd rarely seen before. But suddenly, the fire faded and the soft expression he'd grown to know over the years returned.

' _What happened? Why are we in a cave?_ '

"Neo, do you remember anything from the last fifteen minutes?"

' _I remember Coco saying to get to the alcove, so we ran through the mist, then we were here... right?_ ' This didn't make sense to Fox at all. A growl from the monster could be heard.

"It's gaining," he told Neo, "Coco we need to book it, stat!"

"Why? What's happening?" Velvet uttered through near chattering teeth.

"Nothing's wrong Velvet, we've got to keep going. Fox is just scared and is trying to take as long as possible on this thing. The deeper we go, the closer we are to getting to the bottom of this. Let's just see where it takes us."

' _What is up with them?_ ' Neo queried. Fox simply shook his head, not knowing the answer. The four of them continued further down, hoping to find more clues as to what was going on in here. Neo's head pounded something rotten, like a swarm of Nevermores were all living inside of her head pecking away at the inside to fight their way out, but the one thing they were thankful of was the fact that the beast seemed to be losing ground on them. A few minutes later, Fox heard the sound of cascading water and shot on ahead to find the waterfall that lead out to 'The Harvest'.

"The waterfall! Guys, we can get out here." Fox turned to see the three of them not paying attention at all; Velvet cowering in fear and Coco holding her hands as Neo's blade was held directly to the fashionista's throat. "What the hell?! Neo what has gotten into you?"

' _She wants to go deeper into the caves, and it is a stupid idea!"_

"Coco, why do you want to go deeper into the caves?"

"It's cool Fox, that's why. We can explore the caves, find the people that were taken, save the day."

"Okay, something has definitely happened to _all_ of you. This isn't what you are normally like at all. Velvet, you've improved your confidence so much since I've known you and it's gotten nearly to the point where people wouldn't even know about that if you didn't tell them. You would have never relapsed like this, and even then, you've never been this scared before." Her response was to hide some more. "Coco, you have plans galore. You seldom 'go with the flow', especially when facing a Grimm we have no idea about."

"But where's the fun in that?"

"There is no fun to be had, this is a serious mission. We're all being paid good Lien to complete this, and I _know_ that you wouldn't think twice about putting the mission as lower priorities than personal treks." His attention turned to his girlfriend. "And Neo, you've never been this angry. You've threatened people before, sure, but you've always been in control. This is... unbridled anger, directed at us. Why are you a-" Fox spotted something moving in the shadows, approaching fairly fast. "It's here, run!" He grabbed Coco's and Velvet's hands and ran towards where he saw the waterfall. Neo, surprisingly, followed with very little hesitance. He got to the edge, but saw that they weren't at 'The Harvest's' edge, but were still a good seven or eight metres up. Fox didn't know what to do, but the sounds of the monster grew ever more present even over the rushing water. "Neo, grab Coco and jump on 'three', alright?" The mute rolled her eyes, unwilling to co-operate. "Just do it!" he demanded, grabbing Velvet in a hug. "On three, ready?" The roar that came from behind them was too close for comfort, so he skipped the niceties. "Three!" They jumped through the water with their teammates in tow, landing in the lake with a heavy splash.

Coco's beret was the first thing to surface, floating peacefully away from the waterfall. Coco came up next, gasping for air and searching around for her sunglasses and beret. She found the latter and started swimming towards it as Neo and Velvet surfaced. Fox floated up last, and Neo's eyes shot to vanilla white when she saw the cut across his forehead.

' _Fox, are you alright?_ '

"I'm fine," he said, unaware of the cut above his eye that seemed to be bleeding quite heavily. "Something happened in there that's honestly confusing me. We've got to talk about it," he told them when they reached him. Coco grabbed her beret and put the wet accessory atop her head, grinning as she did so, then instantly regretting it as cold water dripped down the back of her collar and straight down her spine.

"At least I got one of them back" she uttered, looking for the silver lining in all of this. The moment she finished, the roar could be heard once again; that warble/click roar the Grimm makes. "What in the hell?" Fox noticed that they all looked like this was the first time that they had heard this noise, despite the fact they all heard it multiple times whilst in the alcove and deeper into the cave.

"Can we get out of the lake please?" Velvet asked as she started treading water to stay afloat.

"Yeah, lets," Fox replied, wiping his brown and frowning at the crimson stain left behind, "but we have some serious talking about this thing to do."

* * *

It's probably the closest I could get to this thing being creepy without it being a full blown monster that needed the story to be bumped up to **M** again.

I remember that this actually came from me writing Coco and Velvet really poorly initially. What you see was actually my original writing for them, without any reason as to why. I decided to roll with it and see what came of it, and lo and behold I get this. Hope it worked for y'all.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	73. Forming Rifts

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

CFVN were wrapped up their gowns with mugs of their favourite hot beverages in hand, the gowns working their magic and heating up in such a way to dry their respective owners. Yatsuhashi and Jade had joined them as well, especially as Yatsuhashi needed to know as part of their team. Jade kind of tagged along, but she brought her own drink, just so she didn't feel like she was being waited on. They sat in relative silence save the sound of sips from their mugs as the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the floor.

"So," Fox started, the cut just above his right now plastered up much to the boy's chagrin - he hated plasters, "what do you actually remember about anything?"

"Mist," Velvet muttered, "I remembered that dark mist closing in, then a flash of light and then all of a sudden I was wrapped in your arms hitting the water."

"I'm the same," Coco admitted, "though I came too with no beret on my head, and no sunglasses on. And I've lost those now in the bottom of that lake; it's a good thing I brought all those spares..."

" _There was mist, I took a photo, suddenly I was in the cave with you._ "

"Wait... we went in a cave?" Yatsuhashi shared a concerned look with Fox on hearing Coco say that.

"You can't remember you went in a cave at all?" Jade asked. Coco just shook her head, and Velvet mentioned the same thing. "Neo, what about you?"

" _Like I said, I remembered being in the cave, we were walking for a while - 10, 15 minutes maybe - before I was woken up by the cold water of the lake._ " The Mates collectively slumped in their seats knowing how long they missed. Their Marks glowed on their shoulders as emotions flowed through one into the other, but they were both feeling the same sort of feelings.

 _Disappointment. Shame._

"What happened?" Velvet asked, "Why is it that we can't remember a thing, but you can remember everything in full and Neo in fractured parts? There has to be something." Even as she spoke, it was evident that the mage was trying to convince herself as well as everyone else. Fox took a sip of his drink, coffee with a splash of milk, rested it on the floor and recounted the events up at the 'Summer Spirit'.

"So, we regrouped after trekking in pairs to find any trace of this mysterious Grimm, that much I'm sure you all remembered?" The girls, excluding Jade, all nodded. "And the mist, you've said you remember that?" Another round of nods. "Right, so after the mist surrounded us, Neo took a photo hoping to get a glimpse of the thing, and you and Velvs screamed at something, I'm assuming the Grimm. You ordered us into the alcove, and that's where things started getting a little bit odd." Neo cocked her head, curious as to what happened. "You all were coughing, then you started acted... exaggerated. Coco, you were overly curious and carefree, to the point where you didn't care about our safety."

"I... what?"

"Yeah, you were insisting we went deeper and deeper into the caves to 'explore' and 'be the hero'." The fashionista blushed heavily at that. "Velvet was scared at everything; not like you used to be though, much worse."

"Really?" she asked, her voice quiet and embarrassed at the idea of her being so scared again after doing so much work to improve ever since Beacon.

"Really. You were cowering behind Coco and nearly every opportunity you got to say so you were reminding us how scared you were. And Neo," he turned to his girlfriend, "you were angry. You were throwing tantrums and lashing out, to the point where you..." he stopped himself, favouring to show her rather than tell. He got up and moved over to Coco, then lowered the gown ever so slightly to expose the base of her neck, revealing to all the small wound inflicted by the parasol wielding woman.

With a look of terror on her face at the mere thought of hurting her friend, all Neo managed to sign was a simple " _Was that... me?_ "

"Yeah" he answered, nigh reluctantly.

" _First or second time?_ " Everyone else looked slightly confused at that question, especially Jade. Fortunately, her Partner was translating whatever Neo said to everyone her so that she didn't get excluded from the conversation.

"Second."

The ice cream girl noticed most of the people there were looking at them without a clue as to what they were talking about. ' _Care to explain it to them?_ ' Fox wordlessly nodded.

"Neo at one point stormed past you, so I went after her and looked her dead in the eye, only to be met with a ferocity unlike I've ever seen in her eyes before. But as I stared harder, it faded, and she came back unsure of anything that had transpired between the mist up top and now nearly 20 minutes later." Coco and Velvet looked at each other once again, realising now that they had been under the influence of the Grimm's abilities for over half an hour and feeling pretty helpless about it. "We walked some more, having established that she didn't remember a thing, but when I found a way out, I turned back and Neo had swapped back to this anger. At this point, she had her blade at your throat," he indicated to the mark, "and was threatening to hurt you for suggesting that we continued any further. A sneaking suspicion tells me that she would have followed you though, just as much as Velvet was going to despite her terror."

"What makes you say that Fox?" The tan skinned boy turned to his taller partner who posed him the question. With no concrete proof, Fox initially shrugged before giving his reasons.

"I mean, I'm pretty certain it was the Grimm that did that to you - how, we have yet to find out - but because the thing was following us from afar, it knew that we were going to do that. Only when we stopped did it gain on us, because it thought we'd got lost or couldn't move anymore, so it went it to take us to... wherever it takes those that go missing. I'm assuming deeper into the caves, that's where Coco was leading us." The group let it all sink in.

"I think I have some idea then," the giant hypothesised, drawing his teammates' attention, "it did something to all of you, correct? All excluding Fox for reasons we have yet to discover. And in doing that it must have done something very deliberate."

"Fox, what happened to Velvet again?" the greenette asked, wanting to contribute to the conversation.

"She... she was scared. Scared of practically everything, from the small to the totally necessary she was cowering behind things out of fear."

"Way to lay it on..." the Faunus in question semi-joked.

"Jade does have a point though Velvet," Yatsuhashi countered, "you were so scared of everything because it _made_ you scared and fearful of everything. In doing so, it amplified a primal negative emotion - fear - almost as if it was creating a homing beacon for it using you at the source. And what better way to create fear than by giving you something constant to fear. Someone to bring it out." Eyes drifted to Neo, who started to realise what was being said here. "Your anger was a driving force to keep Velvet fearful, to keep the beacon working almost."

"And that lines up," came Fox with his own observations, "the Grimm - which by the way, we're going to be needing a name for it if we're submitting a report on this thing - lost us and seemingly gave up the chase once Neo had snapped out of it. Not much was fuelling Velvet's fears, so naturally they'd fizzle out. It also explains why when I found our out by means of the waterfall it came charging in; it had lost its prey and when it found us again it was done waiting around and just went in."

"But if you just- _we_ jumped from where we were into the water, why didn't it follow?"

The scarred young man answered honestly. "Not a clue Coco. Not a clue."

"Also, what about me? It made me into a 'be a hero' type person. Why?" Before Fox could voice his suggestion, it was actually Neo who jumped in first, with Yatsuhashi still translating for Jade.

" _You're our team leader,_ " began the tri coloured woman, " _so naturally we'd follow you and it must have picked up on that. But as for why it did that, I'm assuming it made you entranced on a goal, fixated on getting somewhere._ "

"You _were_ going on and on about saving everyone, so I guess it made you focussed on that?"

"No, it _did_." Everyone turned to Jade. "It made you go straight into its trap, leading you deeper and deeper into the mountain, drawing you towards where it keeps its victims and, when you're eventually down there, it strikes and takes you. I-it swaps you out for the old ones and uses you to fuel its hunger." The neon green of the woman's eyes grew misty as tears welled.

"Jade, are you-"

"Juliette went there one day - up to 'Summer Spirit' - and I went with her," the woman continued, ignoring all attempts to ease her emotions, "but I needed to use the restroom. When I came back, Juliette had fled down into the cave system via the alcove. I followed as best as I could and found the place that... thing kept everyone it took. I saw her struggling so hard, so I tried to get her down. All I did was make noise and draw its attention, so I needed to run. In doing so I..." the tears were in full force and guilt bled from every word she spoke. Velvet looked at Yatsuhashi, worried about both her and him as the gentle giant's panic grew on his face, "I ran from it all. But I didn't stay away. Juliette is..." As much as Jade trusted CFVN, she didn't trust them to the same level as she did the Y of the team, so withheld from the complete truth, "a special person, someone who _couldn't_ be kept there. So, I went and... did the one thing I've regretted most from my entire existence."

"Jade?"

"I found someone else."

"You what?!" Coco snapped back, unintentionally scaring her Mate but getting her point across effectively.

"I went back to the resort and found someone else!" she reiterated, her reply shouted at the leader with a harshness not seen in the woman before. "I came back to the resort and enlisted the help of someone who was there on their own with no one waiting for them elsewhere! They told me that they were there for a few more days before they would take all their possessions, sell them on and then walk off and wait for the Grimm to come and end their suffering. I... tricked them, saying that he could do one last good deed before he did that, so I took him back there and g... got him caught by the beast." Coco, Yatsuhashi, and surprisingly Neo as well, looked at the woman mortified with what she had done, whereas Fox and Velvet watched her sympathetically break apart and spill everything. "As he was being caught up top, I made my way down to the cavern it kept people and took Juliette. We fled and survived, and I'm thankful for that, but I regret what I did every single day because I don't know what happened to him."

Team CFVYN were silent, letting the events spoken to them sink in. Jade Celadon, this woman that they had become friends with, sacrificed one person to save another.

"I can't believe you," their beret totting leader finally said in nothing more than a harsh whisper, only for it to pick up immediately afterwards, "you lead someone to that place to die just so Juliette could live?"

"Come on Coco, that's a little bit ha-"

"I don't want you sticking up for her Velv; she _killed_ someone!"

" _So have I!_ " Neo signed with as much ferocity as she could manage. " _I spent_ _ **years**_ _killing, yet I was welcomed into our little family. Jade here kills_ _ **one person**_ _and suddenly she's the villain? Coco, I know you're sticking with what you feel is right, but it's not one set of rules for us, another for everyone else - by that logic, I wouldn't even be close to you. And neither would Yatsuhashi._ " It was a low ball she really didn't want to pitch, but at the end of the day her point needed to be heard and it felt like the only way for the leader to see reason. Surprisingly for the dual haired woman, Coco listened.

"Jade, please understand I didn't mean it," she began, "I assure you it was simply shock and my heart speaking before my head got a chance to hear reason."

"I'm not going to pretend a simple apology makes up for it, but similarly I understand; it's how this whole thing happened, right?" Her voice sounded hurt, so Yatsuhashi rested a hand on her shoulder for comfort. Jade leaned into him from there, resting her head on his chest, a move he warmed to over a couple of seconds as opposed to instantly, but it still made her feel safer. Coco huddled up to Velvet, not wanting to be alone through her guilt.

"Do you remember looking at it?" Fox asked, easing them out of their silence once more. Not answering with words, the woman nodded. "Okay... what did you see?"

"Tentacles... very little bony bits... I saw everything but the face."

' _Neo, can I borrow your Scroll?_ ' She nodded and passed it over. "This is what it looks like." Jade looked at it, then recoiled slightly at the sight of it. Yatsuhashi didn't look too pleased to see it either.

"Yeah, that looks about right."

"Can I see?" Velvet asked. Fox's eyebrows rose at the request.

"Didn't... didn't you see it when you were up there?"

"Fox, we've been over this, I don't remember anything from the moment Neo took the photo of it."

"And Neo, did you actually _see_ it with your eyes?"

' _No, only through..._ ' guessing from the pause, Fox assumed that she was catching on as well, " _only through the Scroll camera,_ " she finished so that everyone else could see. The tanned boy let the information process.

"Right, I might have an inkling as to what that thing can do and how we might be able to stop it, but we're going to need rest and everyone in their right frame of mind. Let's do this tomorrow." Jade took that opportunity to rise and left immediately, sniffling as she left. Yatsuhashi went to go but was held down. "Yatsu, you need to give her some space, let her figure it out for a while herself. She'll come to us, to you, when she's ready." He wanted to be there for her now, but he heeded his more romantically experienced brother and stayed with his team.

* * *

Y'know, even on rewrites, I could never find a way to improve this chapter. It feels really... exposition-y.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	74. Neo to the Rescue

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Neo hadn't done much exploring of the resort. At least, not on her own. She could tell someone where to get Jin Shin Jyutsu or where the sauna room was, but not much more, and even then, with the lack of a voice it became a little difficult. That made what she was currently doing just that little bit more difficult, considering she didn't know much of the resort and she had no clue where Jade would be. Fortunately, there was one person she knew who might.

"Why do I 'need' to do that Neo?" Maron asked, "she is a customer much like you. Giving out a key to her room is removing the privacy she is entitled to." It was established earlier on in their stay that Maron knew some very rudimentary Sign Language, but not enough to hold a conversation with someone as adept as Neo, or any of the rest of Team CFVYN, so the mute woman relied on using her Scroll to communicate to the receptionist.

 **'** **She's upset, and I'm going to be there to comfort her'**

"Yes, but I don't see why I need to give you access to _her_ room for you to do that."

 **'** **It's safe ground for her, so she feels more comfortable'**

"I can't fault you on that, I must say, but I don't want to be cleaning up your mess afterwards because things go pear shaped." Heterochromia swapped to pink and her eyes lit up with delight on hearing that, their owner rushing to type out her response.

 **'** **Does that mean that was a yes?'**

"Yes," the byzantine eyed contact relented, "I will give you access to Jade's room. But you must promise me that she stays safe." Glee left Neo for a minute as she tried to understand the meaning behind that.

 **'** **Has something happened before?'**

"Nothing that I am willing to repeat, but yes." She took the ice cream girl's Pass and did a couple of things with it, then gave it back to her once she was done. "That should give you access to the room she uses most. Hopefully she'll be in there for you, else have you tried the salt pools?" Neo shook her head. "Try there first, if she's not there and not in her room then I can't think where she might be." Neo signed a simple 'Thank You', one of the few things Maron understood, and wandered off to the room, foregoing the salt pool altogether. One problem: she had no idea where Room 14N was, and Maron had disappeared off back to work.

' _Oh well, trial and error it is then_ ' she rationalised.

Neo started by heading from the reception area back to Team CFVYN's two rooms; 3F and 3H. So from that, she knew that the letter at the end denoted how far down the corridor they were going. Looking on the other side of the hall, she saw rooms 3E, 3G and 3I. Each letter meant a different side of the corridor - another helpful bit of information. Now, would that still apply throughout the resort?

Neo took a walk, taking in a bit more of the layout now that she could do so freely. There were a lot of places in this resort that were very nice: hot stone rooms, sauna rooms, ice pools, a couple of bars and small restaurants spread out over the multiple buildings, even a small - yet very crowded - natural spring inside the main building, aptly named 'The Equator' Spring. But even walking around in a pair of white shorts, pink bikini top and her unfairly comfortable gown she couldn't stay to gawk at what was offered here, both in terms of amenities and the people using them, for too long as she had other business to do. Although in her defence, she needed to check to see if Jade was anywhere in the crowds.

Neo arrived in the fifth building in the resort, a smaller building than the other three she'd walked through to get here, and finally saw corridor 14. It wouldn't take too long to get there from their rooms, probably 5 minutes if you were making a beeline for them and not looking for people throughout all the buildings along the way. Turning down it, she saw Room 14Y on one side and 14Z on the other side, so she continued walking down the corridor finally reaching Room 14N. It wasn't a daunting task, but she took a heavy breath anyway to ready herself.

' _Here goes nothing..._ '

Neo raised her Pass to the lock outside the door and was relieved to hear the soft click when the door registered it. She gently eased the door open and stepped inside, revealing a room nearly identical to the ones that the team were staying in, albeit ever so slightly smaller due to it being only a single bed room. The tell-tale pear green bob faced away from the entrance and outside on the small balcony, hair blowing slightly in the late afternoon breeze. The sliding door was open at the back, so Neo tiptoed her way through the room making no noise whatsoever and got right behind Jade without her noticing. Whilst the sight of Jade leaning down onto the railing with her bum sticking out slightly was rather alluring, Neo knew she wasn't here to be thinking that sort of thing, she was here to help.

The mute delicately snaked her arms around the greenette's middle and hugged her from behind, her touch gentle and reassuring but still firm enough to provide comfort without having it seem like she was skimping on the hug. Surprisingly, Jade didn't back away or try and shake her off, but instead held onto the arms around her.

"I don't know why you're doing this," Jade started once the embrace had gone on for a minute or two in silence, "but I appreciate it now." She turned around only to be slightly taken aback when she saw Neo there. "Oh! That, I wasn't expecting. How'd you get in here?" Neo took out her Scroll and typed up her response.

 **'** **I asked Maron to give me access. I told her you were upset and that I was going to help'**

Jade seemed a little startled at what the tri coloured woman was saying, she never expected one of them to come and help her like this. Even Yatsuhashi looked scared at what she had said. "How can you help?" Neo started typing, but Jade continued. "I made a choice, one that I know is going to haunt me until the day I die. I lead a man to his apparent death, all in an effort to save Juliette. How is one life worth more than the life of another?" Neo paused and watched as tears started to fall, the emotions coming back to the taller yet younger woman. Her eyes started glowing a strong neon green and Neo felt the sadness spilling from her. She copied what she had written, then removed it and typed up something new.

 **'** **Do you love her?'**

"What? No. She's just a good friend, and a woman whose secret I know and must shoulder until either of us passes."

 **'** **I thought I'd ask, love makes you do crazy things'**

"Besides, I have no interest in women."

 **'** **Yet you weren't opposed to the idea of us helping you in** **that** **department when we offered'**

Jade blushed hard being reminded of that, the tears subsiding slightly as embarrassment overtook sadness as the stronger emotion of the moment.

 **'** **I have been in the same boat as you'**

The ice cream girl pasted in her comment from earlier and was now showing it to Jade. Said woman's eyes ceased glowing, letting Neo's emotions remain in her own control, but still looked at the shorter of the two in confusion. Neo held out her hand and walked with Jade to the bed in her room, shutting the sliding door on the way inside. They sat on the bed together, Neo opting to get completely on and sitting cross legged, Jade balancing on the edge with her legs dangling off to the floor. By the time Jade had reached the bed, Neo was already typing up an explanation. "Is there a quicker way to do this?" The mute shrugged, adding something to the end of her sentence before handing the Scroll to Jade for her to read.

 **'** **Just over 10 years ago when I was 17, I left home and went into crime. It made things easier for my family due to my illness. I have an extreme case of DAG Syndrome, one that was so potent that combined with the treatment they gave me caused it to flare and destroy my vocal chords entirely.'**

Jade looked at the woman sitting in front of her and could honestly never imagine this person living a life of crime - she was kind, compassionate, she cared for people and looked out for others, seemingly before looking after herself. The green themed woman read on.

 **'** **In the 8 and a half years I spent in that lifestyle, I did my fair share of unsavoury deeds. I stole, I lied, I killed. The number whose lives I've directly ended total around 80 or so. Those who have died indirectly because of my actions may very easily reach three figures. 8.5 years and hundreds of people are dead because of what I was doing to get by, earn money and simply survive.'**

The tears that were falling from Neo's eyes weren't brought on by Jade's semblance, these were all her own. Jade read on, every passing second feeling more pained at what she was reading.

 **'** **And I regretted it. Every death. I hid my fear and disgust at what I was doing, masking behind a face that relished the kill and grinned at misfortune. But when I was alone, I cried myself to sleep. You made a fair trade. Yes, you may have led a man to his death, but you saved another you deemed worthy of saving. I took lives and never ever saved one in return. I never wanted this to happen when I started, but I was travelling down a path I couldn't escape.'**

"How did you escape then?" Jade enquired. Neo simple gestured back to the Scroll, and Jade realised that the answer was most likely written in a following sentence.

 **'** **When I died…'**

"Wait, what?!" Neo shook her head and pointed to the Scroll once more, urging her to press on. And press on she did, but not without thinking long and hard about the fact that as far as she knows she was speaking to a ghost. ' _This is crazy!_ '

 **'** **... the world had handed me a reset button. I could start anew, and I did. I went after Fox because I found him quite attractive the last time I met him, and it took a while, but we've been together for a long time now. I haven't done anything like that since; I'm a new person. The guilt remains, even if the burden has gone. It took essentially Divine Intervention to free me from what I had done, but you need to realise that what you did was for the benefit of everyone. I know Juliette is special in some magical way, we figured that much out, so her rescue must have been pretty high priority. Don't let this stop you.'**

Jade was staring at the screen with her eyes streaming tears. This woman on her bed, who she had believed to be a kind and gentle person, had killed people - many more than she had thought, and yet she turned out so nice. Jade finished reading what Neo had said.

 **'** **The only way this would be faster is if you knew Sign Language'**

"Oh, right. Sorry." The mute simply smiled a teary smile, her eyes flitting to dual pink as she did and took her Scroll back to type something up again.

 **'** **Coco was in the wrong to shout at you; she was, and still is, pretty raw from having her arse handed to her by a Grimm tentacle monster. I'm the only one who truly knows what that burden is like, to have consciously made the decision to kill someone and how it can affect you if you let it simmer and bubble away. Don't do that, it'll hurt you. Trust Team CFVYN, we're your friends :)'**

The smiley face brought a laugh to Jade as she looked at Neo, who was sat opposite her with a smile of her own. "Thank you, Neo. It means a lot." The mute nodded, took the Scroll back and wrote something more.

 **'** **I know it's probably not the best time, but cuddling in my underwear is quite a nice way to relax and de-stress'**

"You're just saying that to see me in my undies, aren't you?" Neo silently hushed the girl, winking as she did so. Jade sighed at her, then continued, "I'm not stripping down, but I'll take the cuddling." Smiling at the acceptance, Neo shuffled herself so that she was up nearer the pillows, then lay down and faced away from Jade. "This feels weird."

 **'** **What does?'**

"With Yatsu and I, I am very obviously going to be little spoon even if we haven't done this yet; it's an odd feeling getting to be big spoon."

 **'** **Well, even though we tend to split spoon privileges, I'm normally end out being big spoon'**

"Huh, Fox didn't seem like that sort of person."

 **'** **Trust me, I'm a very heavy Dom - metaphorically, of course. I've been with a fair few people and Fox is the only person who's been on top of me'**

"I didn't need to know that..."

 **'** **Sure you do. But even so, I will do and go as far as you push: no more, no less. You want to cuddle for hours, I'm down. You want to relieve the tension by having sex until the sunrise, I'll need to grab some things from my room first but I'm up for it'**

"You... brought sex toys _here?_ " The petite woman nodded with a cheeky grin on her face. "What were you thinking?"

 **'** **That I need to bring a couple of my sex toys with me'**

"I don't to be having this conversation with you," Jade mentioned, the slight unease in her voice apparent, "can we stop it now?" Neo nodded, and kept that conversation topic away from her Scroll. But one thing did come to the forefront of the green haired woman's mind. "Why are you helping me?" Neo turned her head around and stared at her like it was the dumbest and most ridiculous question in the world. "I'm serious, why would you help me when anyone else could do the same?"

 **'** **Other than the fact you're quite attractive and have a really sturdy bum…'**

"How's _that_ relevant?"

 **'** **... being alone with those thoughts can hurt your self-esteem and drive. You've so much to live for and see, and I want you to see it all. And as I said, I'm the only one of the team who knows exactly what it was like'**

"Okay..." Jade seemed unconvinced. Neo suddenly, and worryingly for Jade, started smirking as she typed up one more thing. Handing over her device with a Cheshire grin, Jade went through Neo's words.

 **'** **You need to relax. Don't attack me when I kiss you'**

"I'm sorry, wha-" Neo's lips connected with Jade's, staying there for more than a brief moment before the smaller woman pulled away. The greenette remained frozen in disbelief as Neo typed up her reason.

 **'** **You can trust me. I did that a) because I could, but b) because you needed that. You've had small gestures from Yatsu like hugs and reassuring words, but other than that you've not had a proper show of affection. That's me making up for his "wrong-doings" there. I am your friend and you can confide in me, or Coco, or Velvet, or Fox if you really wanted to help relieve any and all stress you have whilst we're still here. Yatsu can be your rock, but we can help too. Okay?'**

Jade looked at Neo, trying to see if she just typed that up because it sounded philosophical and actuality couldn't care less, but the feeling behind those words were shown in her eyes. "Okay" she parroted, sounding much more convinced this time. The girls lay back down on the bed, Jade the big spoon, and remained there for hours in bliss. Jade rambled every now and again, getting small things off her chest and crying where appropriate to the point that when enough had been said, she felt so much better inside.

After a good three hours of the pair of them alone in the room sorting Jade out, Neo eventually started taking her leave.

"I honestly can't describe how much of a help you've been this evening Neo, thank you." The pair got up and started heading to the door, Neo handing her Scroll over en route.

 **'** **Anything for a friend. Any last requests before I shoot off?'**

Seeing that made the taller woman freeze, an action Neo saw immediately. She cocked her head to one side, curious as to why this woman she'd been cuddling with for the past three hours was suddenly all flustered in front of her. "I... uh..." Seeing this unease, Neo grabbed Jade's shoulders and stared right into her eyes, telling the green eyed girl to speak her mind. "It's... embarrassing," she admitted. Naturally, the mute shrugged. "Can we... y'know... I mean, not _now_ but... at some point... you said you'd... help me to deal with... _that_..." Neo typed up a response.

 **'** **Just say the word, we're all adults here'**

Jade steeled her gaze and spoke with conviction. "Can you girls have sex with me?" There was a pause, one that let Jade's ring throughout her mind. "Just to relieve some tension" she added, not wanting her request to sound too desperate. Neo simply grinned, answering as best as she could.

 **'** **Ask Yatsuhashi first. Say what you want to do and have him approve it. If you love him like Coco and Velvet or myself and Fox love each other, then going behind his back is a sure fire way to end this thing. I will speak with Fox as well. If he says he's okay, and we will be checking with him, then it's your call for the when. We've got just about two weeks left here, but getting that Grimm is our main aim'**

"I understand, and I will" Jade replied. The ice cream girl leaned in to hug Jade goodbye, but the greenette managed to surprise her by planting a caste kiss on the cheek as they leaned in. "Gotcha." Neo smirked, proud that Jade had grown so much and was much more confident around her and the rest of the team, that kiss proving such. She was integrating herself into the midst nicely. As they broke their hug, Neo took her leave and headed back to their shared room. Walking in to 'The Fun Room' to see Coco and Velvet kissing and Fox nowhere to be seen gave her the distinct impression that a certain couple had booked the room in the time she had been with Jade.

"I thought you had everything Fox," Coco grunted in annoyance, breaking the kiss to turn to chastise the scarred boy only to see Neo standing in the doorway instead, "Neo. Where did you go? We didn't have a clue, Fox has been worrying about you for an hour now."

" _I went to go comfort Jade, she needed reassuring. Sorry I made you all panic._ "

"Well you're safe, so we can stop worrying." Neo walked towards them, a small smirk gracing her lips. "Could you, y'know, _not_ come closer? We kind of booked the room for a reason." Neo kept getting closer.

"Why do we even bother?" Velvet pondered out loud, earning a shrug from her Mate.

" _Jade asked me._ "

"What? About having sex with us?" Neo nodded, her smirk growing.

"And you said what exactly?" Coco enquired.

" _To ask Yatsuhashi first. I'll speak with Fox too. Once that's all cleared up, she sets the date after we've taken down big, black and slimy up at 'Summer Spirit'._ "

"Okay, thanks for the heads up Shortcake. Now, fuck off so we can fuck."

" _Subtle_ " the mute responded, walking up to the fashionista and placing a quick peck on her leader's lips before grabbing her things and heading next door.

"Why do I still love you," Velvet teased, "even after everything you and Neo do?"

"Because Neo and I have our thing, but what you and I have is irreplaceable; I'd never do anything of ill intent behind your back Velvs, you know that." The Rabbit smiled, wordlessly confirming her Mate's comment. "Now, I believe we were about to start something, weren't we?"

"I think we were," the Faunus replied, bringing her girlfriend into a fiery embrace, but not before taking the beret off her head and placing it on her own.

* * *

Neo in Mum Mode... that turns into weird friend mode.

It's another 'slow' chapter again, and I'm sorry - I just wrote the story without a lot of thought going into the structure. I really hope y'all're still enjoying it.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	75. Colette's not Here Anymore, Mom

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The next morning, everyone met up again after breakfast in the bedroom to discuss the plan. Jade joined them not only to hear what they were going to do, but also so that she could speak with Yatsuhashi afterwards regarding her proposition concerning the three women of the team.

"Okay, run that by me one more time," the leader requested, being on the receiving end of a briefing for once, and the prospect wasn't thrilling her greatly - she hated not having the control. Fox sighed, trying his best but failing to capture Coco's attention, so Oum knows how the others were coping.

"It doesn't like to kill," he began, repeating himself for the second time that morning, "as far as we know from Jade's recount of the story and the fact that Juliette, Team HLQN and Jade's parents are still around, the man is the only known death. It would much rather take the victims and use them like batteries, draining them over time. Why that is, we aren't sure."

"I got that bit," the fashionista admitted, "it was the rest." Yatsuhashi was waiting patiently on one of the beds pseudo-meditating, Velvet was stood by Coco's side, Neo and Jade were sitting on the other bed, the former teaching the latter some basic Sign Language so that they could communicate with a little more ease, leaving Coco and Fox to go through the plan on the little table down the far end of the room.

"So, going off a couple of pieces of evidence we have – more specifically, Jade's story and Neo's photograph of the Grimm – we can safely assume that it's a hypnotic Grimm, preferring to get its victims in a trance and have them go to its nest of 'their own accord' rather than drag them there, and that it trances people with direct eye contact. The only way we know for the trance to be completely broken is a cold shock, so in our case, a jump into 'The Harvest'."

"Uh huh."

" _That's_ why I never got affected when we were up there yesterday; I never saw it. And Jade mentioned she saw everything but its face and she snuck in and out of that place twice, so it must be the direct eye contact. Now, what happened to Neo is where things got interesting. She got hypnotised, making you assume she saw the beast, but she broke from the trance before the icy dip. That's when she told me that she never actually saw the beast, she only caught that small glimpse of it when the camera flashed on the screen of her Scroll. There was never direct line of sight eye contact, which is why direct and prolonged eye contact with me broke it."

"Yeah, got that."

"So, the only way we can defeat this thing is if we kill it without ever looking at it."

"There it is, _that's_ the part that makes no sense to me!"

"Why not?" Yatsuhashi asked, having merely been resting his mind but not to the extent that he couldn't jump back into everyday life with a flick of a metaphorical switch.

"C'mon big guy, use your brain. We can't not look at the thing, it's a big creature and if we can't look at it, we'd be swiping at it in the dark." Coco turned to the ice cream girl behind her. "Hey Shortcake, would you mind getting captured again if it means Fox can get re-blinded? We're going to need a tactical advantage against this thing." Neo glared daggers at the caramel woman, flipping her the bird.

"I know what that one means!" Jade said with mock enthusiasm, breaking Neo's stern look and causing her to silently giggle.

' _When we have our "Girls' Night In",_ ' Neo mentioned, her inner thoughts a lot less pleasant than her external demeanour, ' _I am going to edge her so hard for that comment against you._ '

' _I wish I could be there to see that_ ' Fox replied, imagining Coco being forced close to release before being deprived of the sensation repeatedly was a small payback for years of playful banter directed to him and Neo. It was petty revenge at its best and most sexual. "You may be onto something Coco," he replied having given his thoughts time to disappear lest he say them out loud and ruin the gunner's 'surprise' from Neo later on. "Being blind may be the best case scenario, but it not being able to see us is a close second." The comment drew the remaining two girls from their mini lesson to huddle around the table again, the conversation finally back on track.

"I don't follow Fox. Also, I really don't like being here, why can't I lead?"

"You will be Coco, I'm just presenting, remember?" Coco's Mark glowed, as did Velvet's a split second later.

 _Frustration_

"Coco..." the Faunus warned, righting the fashionista's emotional tangent.

"How many pairs of sunglasses do you have with you here?"

Coco's eyes lit up slightly behind her shades at the mention of fashion, proudly stating "I've now got 6 pairs, 7 including the ones on me right now."

"And in terms of durability, how good are they?"

"I mean, my parents' company made them, so I'd say pretty darn durable. They're not the best, mind."

"Mirrored lenses?"

"Oh yeah, and polarized as well to reduce glare."

"Then we're all going to be needing a pair pretty soon; can we borrow one of yours each?"

"What?" That question stopped her happiness dead in its tracks, bringing her down to neutral instantaneously. "Fox, this better not be a joke because of how many sunglasses I pack - we're supposed to be figuring out a plan."

"It's not, and I am. If these lenses are mirrored, then we can see it, but it can't see us. If the Grimm can't see our eyes then it can't hypnotise us, which is exactly what we want and need, your sunglasses are the perfect way of getting around that obstacle."

" _Fox makes a good point Coco_ " Neo added, encouraging Fox some more to know at least one of them thought the idea wasn't completely silly.

"...I guess that it could work." Hearing her confirmation, Fox smiled from ear to ear, cheering in his head at his small victory. "But you're not wearing _my_ sunglasses, any of you." Velvet went to protest, but Coco interrupted before words could leave her mouth. "Good thing it's a Friday, isn't it?" The fashionista got out her Scroll, smugly walking away from the remaining five people in the room as the dial tone went on.

"Coco, what are you-"

* _Good morning, Adel Fashion._ *

"I'd recognise that voice anywhere; hey Dolly."

* _Is that you Coco?_ * the voice on the line asked. She had a Southern Vacuo twang to her voice, and sounded like she was smiling with every word she said.

"Indeed it is Doll."

* _My gosh Coco, it's been too long! I haven't spoken to you since before you enrolled, how's everything been going at Beacon? You found anyone nice?_ *

"Yeah, Beacon's been fantastic; I'm in my final year now and I'm actually in charge of probably the finest team to ever grace Beacon's Halls." Coco decided to leave out the question about finding someone nice, that conversation topic could drag on for hours if she wanted.

* _Wow, I'm amazed Coco. Honestly, I'm proud of you, you've come a long way from the girl who used to run around the office here._ * The woman, 'Dolly' apparently, let out a little giggle that the others heard, not knowing what on Remnant Coco was up to.

"Yeah. Listen Doll, I'm on a bit of a tight schedule; my team and I are currently on a mission and we need something, so could you ping us through to the top please?"

* _Certainly. We must catch up again soon._ *

"Yeah, I'll speak to you soon Dolly."

* _Bye Coco!_ * As hold music started, Coco thought now was the best time to explain how her mind was working.

"I thought, seeing as you're not wearing my sunglasses, we might as well get you all a pair for yourselves. A sturdier pair as well, if that's alright. We want these things to last against that Grimm." Coco's eyes shifted from the team to Jade, smiling at her. "I can get you a pair too Jade, as an apology for how I acted yesterday, if you'll accept it."

"Yes!" she replied a little too hastily, slamming her hands over her mouth at the response she made. The action made CFVN laugh, whilst Yatsuhashi simple smiled sweetly and placed a hand on her shoulder.

* _Hello, this is Kara Adel._ * Coco's breath hitched ever so slightly hearing the new woman on the line, but she steadied herself and answered.

"H-hi, Mom."

* _Colette? Well, this **is** a surprise._ *

"Where's Dad, I thought he worked in the office on Fridays?"

* _He's off on a trip at the moment, I've taken up some overtime up here to cover him. If you kept in touch more often, you would know these things._ * Coco glared at the screen, hoping her displeasure with speaking to her mother would transfer through the device for the older woman to see. * _Now, as much as I want to think this is a call to catch up with your mother, I assume it's not. Correct?_ * The way Coco's mother spoke reminded the five others present of Coco in many ways, only Kara Adel seemed far more business orientated than her daughter.

"Yeah, you got me," the young fashionista admitted, "it's for business though."

* _Actual business? Or Huntsman-related 'business'?_ *

"I've told you before, being a Huntress is a genuine profession. Without us, the world would be overrun with Grimm, more so than it is now. And yes, it's for Huntsman-related business."

* _I see. So, what is it now?_ *

"Well, we've got this Grimm we're going to be facing soon and we've learnt that we can't look directly at it. I was hoping, if I sent you through sizes, you could get six pairs of Mirror Lens Dravite Sunglasses?"

* _Dravite?_ * the woman practically scoffed at the prospect, * _Colette Adel, you know better than that; the Dravite is notoriously difficult to match with everyone's style. You want to get them-_ *

"Fine, then Dravite _strength_ Frames. Mom, this thing isn't something to take lightly, we need the sturdiest frames we have so that it doesn't break these things - regardless of how they look."

* _I thought I raised you better Colette, looking your absolute best is adamant at all times._ *

"Agreed, but not when practicality takes precedence, as it does here. And I've told you countless times, it's _Coco_."

* _Well, I certainly wouldn't want to impede on your duties as an aspiring Huntress, **Coco** ,_* the name was said with venom, something everyone picked up on. Even Velvet's temper flared at hearing her Mate's chosen name said with such disgust, though that may have also been in part to the pair's Marks glowing and emotions being sent and shared as well, * _I'll get them sent through as soon as I possibly can. Give me sizes and an address, I should be able to get someone to find them all and delivered by tomorrow afternoon._ *

"Thank you, mother."

* _Is that all from you?_ * she asked, her voice clearly hoping it was.

"Yes, that's all. Thanks aga-"

* _Good. Sorry to shoot off like this-_ * she wasn't, *- _but I have a meeting with the stock team in 5 and I fear I may be late. Goodbye._ * The line went dead before Coco could utter her goodbyes. Her Scroll was hurled to the bed, the frustration from the conversation evident in her action.

"I hate that woman sometimes, I really do." The Faunus went up and hugged Coco, comforting her as best as she could.

"I'm proud of you Coco, that took courage."

"I was hoping it was Dad..." she admitted. "I like Dad..." The sudden vulnerability and frailness of the usually bubbly and carefree fashionista after speaking with her mother shook the team slightly. Only Velvet knew about the relationship between Coco and Kara in great detail; Coco trusted Velvet with her life and was spending the rest of her life with her anyway, and as such let a lot of this information out. Fox and Yatsuhashi, and eventually Neo, knew only that their relationship was rocky and to never bring it up. Jade however...

"Your name's actually Colette?" Jade enquired timidly, knowing how raw Coco might be and honestly expecting the worst. The look Velvet gave her made the green haired woman shrink back in an effort to avoid confrontation with the wild-card of Team CFVYN.

"Yeah," came the answer from Coco, shocking her Mate at the discussion of a sensitive subject for her, "I insisted my friends called me 'Coco' when I was starting Combat Schools to differentiate myself from the woman my mother wanted me to be, then I changed it legally at 16 - so one year before I attended Beacon. Everyone since has only known me as Coco, so it wasn't too hard for them to call me that. The only one who has a hard time understanding that is my mother, and despite the fact she knows my name is now legally Coco Adel, she still calls me Colette to spite me. Even Dolly and my Dad adjusted!" The fashionista felt her anger flowing, so she calmed herself down slightly and spoke one last time. "Everyone else knows not to bring her or my real name up, as it reminds me _of_ her. You didn't, so you get a pass. But don't ever bring this up again." Not risking angering her anymore, all Coco got was a nod from Jade. "Good. Now, we need sizes from you for your glasses; might as well have them fitting you properly."

After a few minutes getting everyone's sizes for their glasses, which she admitted were basically all the same save bridge width, Coco went off on her own to send the information off telling everyone else that they wouldn't get here until tomorrow at the earliest, so use today to relax and they'll run through the plan again later that evening. Naturally, Velvet followed Coco after a couple of minutes, and Jade left with Yatsuhashi to ask him something that was very important, leaving Neo alone in the room with Fox.

"What's your plan today then?"

' _I'm going to need a lot of massages after we're done fighting that thing, so... sauna?_ '

"Sounds like a plan," ' _though I thought you would have wanted some **other** way of working up a sweat._ '

' _Fox Alistair,_ ' she replied, feigning surprise and disgust, ' _I am not some sort of animal that craves sex every waking moment._ '

"Uh huh, tell that to your libido."

' _Fuck you._ '

"Point proven."

* * *

If there was one thing Coco and Velvet loved doing together at places like these, it was Mani-Pedi. They could sit back and relax whilst other people made them look even more gorgeous than usual, and any chance to do just that was taken with both hands.

"Coco?"

"Yes cottontail?"

"Why did you do that?" It had been a good half an hour since Velvet had met up with her girlfriend after their meeting and they'd come here, and at all attempts prior the caramel coloured girl was avoiding the question completely. Not this time.

 _Anxious. Embarrassed._

"Velvet, can we not do this right now?" she pleaded, gesturing with her head towards the girls currently working on their toenails. Their Marks glowed.

 _Determined. Driven._

"No, we're doing this now, and I don't care how you feel about the subject. There was a reason, I just want to hear it. You don't just do that hun - so why did you?" Unobstructed by their usual barrier of sunglasses, Coco's brown eyes darted everywhere, focussing on anything that wasn't her partner. "Coco please, talk to me."

"If you would like," one of the staff said having been privy to the entire conversation along with his colleague, "we can leave you for 10, 15 minutes. Sound alright?"

The fashionista would have told them not to bother and they would have just 'postponed' the talk until later, again and again until Velvet either forgot the question or realised she wasn't getting the answer and dropping it altogether, but Velvet was quicker to the verbal draw, saying that "it would be much appreciated", and so they left the mini Main-Pedi room they were in. The very instant the door shut, the Faunus jumped from her chair and walked over to her Mate, smacked her hand against the back head rest of the chair preventing the gunner from escaping, and said one word to her in a firm yet manner; "Talk."

It was seldom that the Adel was afraid of anything. Despite her often blatant reluctance to do so on occasions, Coco had to admit that Kara did a good job of instilling that ideology into her at a younger age - at least that was one of a very short list of things she was proud she had inherited from her mother. Even if she would normally be shaking in her boots, she would never let that show. A strong outer image made her look confident (even if she wasn't), which in turn made her inner fears lessen until she had an outlet to express this anger at/on.

But here, Coco Adel _was_ afraid; not by Grimm, nor anyone from her parents' company coming to sign a business contract that required her signature (the prospect of that happening was few and far between, but not an alien occurrence when she's been 'relaxing on holiday'), but it was the assertiveness of Velvet Scarlatina as she leaned intimidatingly close to Coco's face, to the point where the only feasible way to get any closer was to be inside on another.

"I..." the woman with the caramel tipped hair stalled as best as she, but it was in vain. Coco recognised the impatient expression growing on Velvet's face - much like the one that more often than she'd liked was plastered over her own - and she even felt that familiar never-give-up attitude coursing through her own body and into the woman opposite her. ' _I'm still in awe at how our Auras can work like this_ ' she admitted to no one bar herself, readying herself for the questions that would undoubtedly start coming. "I take it 'I wanted everyone to look good' isn't going to cut it, huh?" Understandably, and rather predictably, the rabbit Faunus simply shook her head. What was a tad more _un_ -predictable was how Velvet gently cupped her girlfriend's cheek and placed a soft, reassuring kiss on the fashionista's lips, then scooted her over slightly to sit on the same seat. She elected not to cuddle up to the other, but she didn't think that Coco would mind that too much this time.

"Just take your time Coco," she reassured. "But not too much time, they've only given us 15 minutes."

"Oum," the elder of the two chuckled, "what wonders come when our personalities collide."

"Yeah, it's awesome. Though it is a bit of a downgrade, what with me getting parts of you in me." Coco's chuckle from before grew to a proper laugh.

"Okay, you definitely have my self-confidence, that's for sure." The playful wink the Rabbit made not only gave confirmation to that statement, but also acted as a way to shift the conversation away from this tangent and back to Coco's explanation as to why she got custom-made sunglasses for everyone in the team, and even got Jade a pair as well. "Mom and I haven't been on the best of terms lately."

"Don't need to be an expert to figure that one out," Velvet quipped back, shocked slightly to see the girl who would normally be up for a bit of light banter staring at her like she had committed a crime against her kind. After the quick apology she gave, she noted to herself to cease the quipping and let Coco explain.

"It's not like I've told you before though, it's... well, it's so much worse. We've fought before, there's no denying we've had our disagreements and struggles and differences of opinion - heck, 'Colette or Coco' is still a favoured game of hers. But this is bigger than all of that, and you are honestly lucky you caught me now, because I don't think I could have been caught if I had started falling." Coco shifted into Velvet's embrace, clearly in need of some comfort. "It's not effective immediately, but the basic gist of why I did that is because Mom has effectively removed me from the position I held in the company."

"Coco, are you-"

"Her reasoning behind it," she continued, "was that 'If you're fighting monsters, then you're not selling the product. And if you're not doing that, you're not worth keeping on the payroll.' So, she did just that; she struck me from it. Sure, it was only a part-time model role that paid me 5 Lien an hour for 7 hours a day just for wearing and endorsing the product outside of the company, but it was income that had gone from what it was to nothing with the signing of paper. Thankfully, Dolly actually cares for me, as does Dad, so the second they found out they fought in my corner. Mom tried her hardest to convince them to drop me, 'it wasn't like what I was doing was brought in any benefits for Adel Fashion' - her words - but Dad and Dolly won through in the end. They barely managed, but they did."

"What did they do?"

The taller girl huddled a little closer as she continued, her voice shaking more and more as time progressed. "They told me to leave and do as my Mom said, because that way it keeps her happy. They had a plan, but she didn't need to know that. Anything to get at Kara really, so I bid my formal goodbyes to the staff about a week before we came back of Summer. This was the Tuesday before, remember that." Velvet gave a brief nod of confirmation. "With the exception of any Huntress jobs that would have been available for someone like me between now and graduation from Beacon, I would have been without my own source of income until such a time as we became Huntresses.

"But on Friday, about an hour or so before we met up to come back, Dolly called me up and explained what her and Dad had done. The two of them had arranged that Dad booked out a simple sum of every day from his work account to a new account - I think it's something like 25 Lien, nigh untraceable and a minute speck on the radar in the grand scheme of things, considering the only thing that sells _less_ than 25 Lien are 'basic' underwear, some socks and the odd bra - and, after a week, that account is emptied into another account. After every four weeks, _that_ account is transferred into mine. So, I'm at about 500 Lien a month coming in from Dad 'off the books' as it were, just until I start making it on my own properly. Dad knows that this life isn't easy, and he knows that I am technically a student with next to no time for another job, so he does his best. It's not a lot, but it's enough I think. He supports me, which is more that I can say for Kara.

"But with the sunglasses, Dad wouldn't have been able to just let them go, so I would have had to pay for them as per normal. However, he would have transferred part of money back to me as per employee discounts over a longer period of time, adding an extra 5 Lien in a day or something until it was all paid off, then bringing it down back to 25 a day. But Kara's in the mix now; she knows about that transaction and she will be monitoring it like a damned hawk. I'm just worried that she discovers it and it all comes crashing down. Dad and Dolly did this so that I wouldn't be left stranded without a small bit of income, but this could backfire and lose them their jobs and then she could sue them for it as well."

"I mean, I have to admit Coco, but it does sound a trifle dodgy to me."

"But it's not; it's paying me for doing my job, which hasn't changed, at a greatly reduced rate. 500 Lien is pittance, it's pocket money essentially. But Kara's probably clued on, and that's what's worrying me."

"Coco, I'm not going to pretend everything will be perfectly fine, but things will be okay. Once we graduate, you can tell Rod to stop immediately. If you wanted to, you can tell him to stop once this _mission_ is done - the pay would be plenty enough to see us through, especially considering there'll be more missions coming afterwards." The burst of _Confidence_ Coco got through their Marks helped in spades, but one thing still irked her.

"Velv, I've told you to stop calling him Rod. He said so himself, you can call him 'Dad'."

"I know, I just... slip up from time to time."

"Forgiven and forgotten." Coco kissed between Velvet's ears, then casually bumped her off the seat with her hips. "Our little therapy session's come to an end, we'd better grab the two of them back." They smiled at one another before they went off to find those two from earlier - hopefully they weren't taking liberties with the 15 minutes they had been given.

* * *

It certainly sucks to be in a leadership position and having to let someone else take over. It also sucks when you're expecting one person, and ending up speaking to another you really could do without. But such is life.

Mirrored lenses are life savers, whether it be against Weeping Angels, or this Grimm - which by the way, does have a name.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	76. Lair of the Grimm of the Waterfall

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Team CFVYN and Jade were seen regularly at the Reception the next day. Not that it was a bad thing, it gave 4 of them the practice to apply some of their lessons from Beacon about public appearance and interaction. Jade had no idea about this, so remained far away - almost to the point where she was in with the crowd to avoid questions - and Neo stood there in silence taking it all in, occasionally signing an answer that one of the others had to translate for the ones asking. But that wasn't why they were here despite how useful of an exercise it was, and at 14:00 their waiting was rewarded when a package arrived for them from Adel Fashion.

"Alright, let's get these on you" Coco said as she opened the package back in their room away from the rest of the people in the resort and handed out the sunglasses to everyone, looking to see which ones belonged to who. The specs were very impressive in design; they had a thick wrapped design frame with a dijon yellow colour to them and - as per Coco's request - had mirrored lenses. Each person tried theirs on and they all fit perfectly, plus there was no way that any of them could see through the lenses into anyone else's eyes. That gave them the best chance at trying to defeat this Grimm by removing its one known advantage it had over all of them.

"Y'know, we still haven't given it a name," Fox commented, "we're going to need one before we submit our findings in."

' _The name'll come later; for now, let's just kill the thing and rescue anyone left in that cave._ ' Fox nodded, and CVY just moved on without uttering a single word. In the years that they'd been together as a team knowing that Neo and Fox have literal unspoken conversations in their heads, they allowed time to let them potentially speak without their input. It took a lot of trial and error, but eventually they got somewhere with it. Unfortunately, Jade was a little out of tube with the rest of them in that regard, but she was promised to be caught up on everything in due time.

With the five members of the team stocked up where necessary and ready to go, they set out towards 'Summer Spirit', all of them praying and hoping that it would be for the last time. But they were not going unaccompanied; Jade insisted in her coming too.

"I know I got you a pair of sunglasses as well Jade," Coco attempted to dissuade the greenette from tagging along, "but that doesn't give you an automatic pass to join us. It's going to be dangerous and if I'm being frank, as leader of the team, I don't want innocent blood on my hands if you come with and get killed."

"I appreciate your concern, I really do. But which one of you five know exactly where that lair is?" That little comment put the five trainee Huntsmen in their place, as none of them did know where it was other than 'Behind the waterfall somewhere'. With a confident smirk, Jade flicked her sunglasses open, placed them on her face and walked off towards their destination, her hips swaying ever so slightly in victory. Velvet elected not to tell the green eyed woman about her hearing the fact she was congratulating herself for doing and saying that as she walked away.

CFVYN, along with Jade, all arrived at 'The Harvest' within the hour, the sun already starting to naturally dip down towards the horizon ever so slightly.

"So Jade," Fox started as they walked closer to the entrance, "what's your plan when we're in there?"

"I'm with Fox; we're mostly going to be fighting the thing and myself and Neo will also be trying to get photos of it. What's your game plan?" Fox's question and Velvet's comment did raise questions of their own in Jade's head. What _was_ she going to do?

"Honestly, I haven't planned that out." She slammed her hands to her mouth the moment the words were already out. ' _Inside your head Jade!_ ' she chastised.

"Jade..." came the deep bass voice of her non-romantic partner. "We can't have you wondering about like a child in there. I'm not in any way insinuating that you are a child, but you had your Aura unlocked by me less than three weeks ago, and with no real training of it and absolutely zero combat training, you'd only be an easily caught beacon for the Grimm. I think it unwise for you to join us in there when we are all going to be preoccupied fighting and documenting it."

"You just said so yourself, you're all going to be preoccupied, as is the Grimm. I know that there are most likely going to be other people in that inner cave, why don't I help you there? You keep its attention on you in the main cave, I grab people from the back room and save them - it eliminates that problem for later, plus there's a chance it could... I dunno, drain its power or something."

"That's-"

"That might not be a bad suggestion." Yatsuhashi turned to his leader, halting in his tracks.

"I don't follow your reasoning Coco" the giant stated as blatantly as he could.

"Yatsu, we've got an Anomaly Grimm in there, one we _know_ controls people's minds. The quicker we get it documented and killed, the quicker we can get out of there. So having someone - Jade - going in and potentially sapping its power and making the fight easier, therefore quicker, makes sense to me. What's not to get?"

"I..." the tank, a young man usually the most composed of the five students, became very flustered at the question, and despite being incapable of physically speaking her mind, Neo was the fastest to the gun on picking up on that.

" _Something on your mind Yatsu?_ "

"No," he answered a little too hastily to be a natural response, "I am fine." Using his new accessory to full advantage, he unfolded his sunglasses and wore them as he tried to continue. His progress was halted by Coco, who stood opposed to him with a hand on her hip and her eyes peering out over her own sunglasses. "Please may you move Coco?"

"Listen Daichi, I've been wearing designer sunglasses for years. I know why someone does things like what you just did; you can't hide your eyes behind the glass from someone like me who had done that themselves." The fashionista saw the swordsman's gaze shift ever so slightly behind the reflective glass, and a small 'I love it when I'm right' smirk grew on her face. "So tell it to me straight: what is wrong?"

"I do not want to lose Jade!" he shot back, a response that shocked not only from the contents of the reply but from the harshness behind them. "I don't want to lose _any_ of you." The silence of the group was only heightened by the cascading waterfall less than 40 metres from them. As they all knew, some more so than others, Yatsuhashi was not one to openly express feelings of this magnitude. For him to do so was indication enough that this was big. "We lost Fox at the Museum, and technically Neo as well, we could have lost Velvet to the Nuckelavee, all of you very nearly died when that... idiot DeVanta turned up, that Lancer swarm last year, Neo's-"

"You know darn well we agreed that's not what they're called Yatsuhashi," Coco scolded.

"You really want me to say it?"

"Yes! It's what we first called them, and that's how they shall be referred to."

The giant rolled his eyes, desperate to return to the point _he_ was trying to make. "The Swarm of 'Fuck-No's'."

"That's better."

"Anyway, Neo's kidnapping and subsequent torture, and now this; so much has happened to, and in all of those we have come out of it with some heavy damage to at least one of us. What happens when our luck runs out? What happens if Fox or Neo dies and they _don't_ come back this time? And Jade," he gestured out to the woman, removing his sunglasses to once again expose his eyes to the world, "let's not forget the incident you and I had at 'The Equinox'. We've trained for years to be the best we can be, yet we're just as vulnerable as you and could be knocked down or killed just as easily. But we've learnt how to protect ourselves physically and how to shield ourselves efficiently with our Auras. You haven't had any experience and don't stand a chance."

"I'm not some cheerleader to be left on the side Yatsu," she countered, but the giant cut her off before she could elaborate further.

"I am aware, but I am a Huntsmen-in-Training. You aren't, and I don't want to lose you because of that fact." He walked up to woman, standing way above her but still emotionally on the complete opposite level as her. "Much like these four are, I consider you family." Velvet gasped behind him, knowing full well what that statement means from him. "Losing family is not pleasant, I know, but it cannot be helped. If it can be stopped, then avoiding doing so is a waste of a life. I want to protect you as much as I can, because I believe you are part of this family now." His giant hands covered hers completely. "Please, if you _do_ join us in there, be careful, stay safe, and don't let our history repeat itself."

By this point, Jade had been crying for a good half of her partner's speech and it showed no signs of stopping. "Yatsu, I don't... I just..." With words failing her, she opted to do what she felt was right, and that was to throw herself into him, swinging her arms over his shoulders and hugging him as tight as she could, never wanting to let go. He returned it with not as much gusto but with the same emotions behind it. Once again though Jade instinctively leaned up and gave him a quick peck on his lips. The others were shocked at her actions, but what was worse was the lack of disgust or fear or... anything negative from Yatsuhashi at all. "Sorry..." she gasped, realising her actions.

"I had said multiple times that I am not comfortable with actions like that-"

"Oh dear," Velvet muttered under her breath, "this'll only end poorly."

"-but I've realised that, in the time we've been together, I have grown more and more relaxed about that. I do not shy away from it, and I will not with you anymore. Whilst _I_ may not initiate a kiss, I see no harm in you starting it because I care for you Jade. I really do. Just, no tongue."

"Man... I wasn't expecting that today," the woman in question admitted, "but I appreciate what you said Yatsu. I know you don't say this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean I don't - I like you, a lot. I won't say the other word, but I'm basically there." He leaned down slightly and hugged her again, and as they embraced the rest of the team got closer.

"We're not going to completely leave her unguarded Yatsu. If she comes in with us, we protect her like we protect each other - no exceptions." The giant nodded at his leader's words of encouragement. "Good. Now come on, let's kill that... um... yeah, I'm with you Fox, we need to name it."

The six of them headed in behind the lowest waterfall entrance, the group fronted by Jade as she was the only one who knew exactly where to go. Having not been either brainwashed out of their minds or looking out for their comrades, or in Yatsuhashi's case not actually been here before, the labyrinth layout of the Grimm's lair amazed and frankly petrified the quintet that was Team CFVYN.

"How can a Grimm create something as elaborate as this all on its own?"

"It's not all the work of the Grimm Fox," Jade replied, "lots of this is natural caving in here. The resort doesn't advertise it because of this Grimm - if it _did..._ well, there'd be at least one group of people coming here a week for the thrill, and at least two of them would get caught." On cue, the ominous alien sounds of the tentacle toting Grimm echoed through the rocky walls of the caves, it's cry unnerving the few that hadn't heard it properly before.

"Sunglasses on people; it doesn't get a chance to take us from this point on." The words were heeded with haste as Coco's sunglasses were all worn from that point on.

' _I feel so stupid..._ ' the tan skinned boy thought to himself.

' _Why?_ ' his girlfriend questioned, reminding him that he was never truly thinking to himself.

' _We're wearing sunglasses. In a cave. With next to zero light inside of it. I can't see shit._ '

' _Fox, sweetie, you're fine. You have your Aura_ _ **and**_ _semblance to help you see, Velvet has her Faunus heritage that makes seeing in the dark a cake walk, and our glorious leader has years of wearing sunglasses everywhere behind her, so she'd be used to this sort of thing. Jade may have done this trip at least a few times and so she's used to the layout of the land, but she has the only torch on her anyway. And thinking about it, Yatsuhashi is just crazy stupid good at a lot of things. You have no course to complain. "You can't see shit",_ _ **I**_ _can see less than an arm's reach away!_ ' Neo's frustration at the events playing out in front of her made Fox smile, softly chuckling out loud and causing a faint echo to reverberate off the walls.

"Voices low guys. If this thing learns we're here we lose the element of surprise, and we need that to find as many people as we can beforehand and weaken it." Try as she might, even her instructions echoed on through the walls. A response didn't come in the form of words though, but instead of it came in the form of clicking. Fox and Jade recognised the clicking instantly, it was the sound the Grimm made, and when they hid in a little hollowed out area of the cave their suspicions were confirmed. The torch on Jade's head was switched off to not alert the beast to their presence, but the button to shut it off wasn't in the mood for co-operating. Try as she might, the near white beam of light wouldn't disappear, and seeing as how there was a faint mist approaching the beam was there in full. Anyone could tell where they were, and when that first tentacle appeared in their vision, they assumed their demise was imminent. But as more and more of the creature appeared in their vision and the louder the clicking got, the weirder and weirder it all felt. The beam of light was shining now directly onto its side, yet it was not curious about it whatsoever.

" _Why is it not seeing us?_ " Velvet asked in Sign, having had Jade move the torch back so that they could all see each other. Everyone else shrugged as the clicking moved past them completely. Everyone sat there trying to figure it out in their minds. Everyone saw Fox's brain click into place as a theory came to mind.

"It's blind" he whispered softly. "The clicking is it using echolocation to navigate around. I knew that sound was familiar. That explains why we rarely see it outside - this place is a perfect location for it to 'see' because everything is, for the most part, walled areas that the echoes could bounce off easily."

"How can it hypnotise then?" Fox had to admit, the question Jade posed was a valid one, but one with an easily discoverable solution.

"It doesn't need to 'see' us to hypnotise. That's probably what those eyes are predominantly for now anyway; if you glance at all of the eyes, you get put into a trance. Whether that happens normally or whether it needs to actively be trying to get you in a trance we don't know, but if we all assume it's even stealing a glance at it that does it, then we know that we are definitely not to look at it directly."

Everyone made quiet sounds of approval before Coco spoke again. "Right, let's keep moving. Jade, lead the way." They all moved out in single file, following Jade like a train.

' _Nice deduction back there._ '

' _I tell you, being blind has some sort of benefit._ '

Although he couldn't see it, or anything in intricate detail at the moment, Neo raised an eyebrow at that comment. ' _And that is?_ '

' _Being able to understand the intricate nuances of how some things work when they're blind through first-hand experience. Things like echolocation and mapping out the surroundings using an external method of their choice. Sadly, it means that once it knows we're here it will not relent. You can't hide from something that can always see you through sounds._ '

' _Duly noted: stay hidden._ ' They walked for a few more seconds before Neo realised something. ' _Shouldn't you have told_ _ **everybody**_ _that little bit of potentially lifesaving information?_ '

' _...Good point, not right now. Besides, bats are a thing, they'll figure it out from that._ ' They all wondered deeper into the cave system, forking off at one point and climbing the higher path until they came to a ledge area looking down upon large open cavern with a single beam of light coming from the high ceiling, illuminating the expanse with natural light that revealed to the students the true as-yet-unseen terror of the Grimm they were dealing with.

To one side were four black pods, sealed up completely to keep whatever was inside contained. On the opposite wall was a few more black masses, only these weren't as complete as the ones over the other side. On this side, people were suspended from the walls by goo most likely secreted by the Grimm attached their hands and shins, with another tendril of tar coloured goo connecting to the area just above their hearts. The ones visible weren't anyone that the six immediately recognised from this distance, a small mercy at least, but that didn't mean they could be ignored.

From their elevated vantage point, Velvet called out what she could see being the only one who was completely unaffected by the darkness of the expansive lair. "The space is really wide, I must say. We've got four pod like things that look like floating eggs of the far left wall near the back - we'll get to them later, they look completely taken over. There are about seven people on the other side though. And I can hear it, but there's no sign of the Grimm. For now, at least, we're partially safe."

"That's great, then we can mount a rescue first, then afterwards we should have enough juice in our boxes and less in its to take it do-" The leader had the hand of the small tricoloured woman thrust over her mouth, a move that was initially met with a little resistance until Coco heard what the reason was for the shushing. A thin black mist seeped in, followed by the thing that produces it. The Grimm slowly moved its way through the cavern from an entrance underneath them, most likely the way out they would be taking. Each movement was accompanied by a brief clicking sound from the creature's mouth.

"That's the creature's echolocation," the ex-blind man mentioned to the others in a whisper, "we're fine so long as we don't make too much sound and that we remain undetected for as long as possible. The second that thing knows we're here it may not hold back - most creatures don't because they know they've got a distinct advantage over their prey." Those who didn't hear the conversation before thanked Fox for the information, then continued scouting the land for a new plan knowing this information.

' _Is that why you found me so easily in the Museum Fox?_ '

' _I... what? That's a little out of the blue don't you think?_ '

' _I'm just thinking, you said that creatures don't tend to give up the chase if they can't see because they know that they've got a leg up on the thing/things they're chasing. Was that your mentality back when we started? You could see me, so you chased me; even though I was lost you found me in a matter of minutes._ '

' _If I am perfectly honest Ni, I had never put much thought into it other than "You are out to steal the thing we're supposed to protect, I must stop you", and even_ _ **then,**_ _we still technically failed. But looking back, yeah I guess so._ ' The mute's smile shone through the bleakness of the cave as they turned their attention back to the briefing at hand. "So, what's the plan?"

"Weren't you listening?" Coco shot back.

"Not this time, sorry... do you mind repeating it?"

"A bit, but I'll make an exception," she teased. "In all fairness, we hadn't gotten far. So; this thing that we still need to think of a name for is syphoning energy from the people hanging over there." She pointed to the right wall where the seven or so people were hanging out for all to see. "I couldn't see how, but I saw their body glowing and then that glow going into that thing, so I'm only assuming at this point. Jade, any clarification?"

"Yeah, I think it steals Aura too; Juliette was pretty low when I rescued her."

"Okay, so be on guard for that. Now, it transferred some, if not all, of that energy over to those pods on the left, so whatever's in there must be fairly important to it. As much as I say we need to rescue these people straight away, we can't leave without photographic evidence of what this thing does; Velvet and Neo, I want you two to snap as many photos as you can of the pods on the left and the gooey... prison things on the right. Velv, try and get a shot of the creature from up here too whilst we go through the rest. Use flash where you need to, but make sure there is no sound - if the Grimm hears us then we lose the surprise. Think you can silently teleport around Shortcake?" The mute shook her head, it required a lot of concentration to teleport silently for her, and knowing that she'd have a fight on her hands she decided to simply say no and conserve her energy for later. "Fair enough, old fashioned way it is. Float down though, that reduces risk of you dislodging anything.

"Once the photos have been taken of everything here, the rest of us get those people down and out of here. Whoever is going to be on that far end of the conveyor belt line we'll have going needs to give them directions to the exit and make sure to tell them to walk _through_ the waterfall, or at the very least take a dip in the lake. They need their minds cleared, and as we found out first-hand either works great. After that, we take out those eggs; it's clearly stock piling that energy mostly for them. Once those four have been destroyed, then we move onto taking the Grimm down. But remember, photos are important - we need to know exactly what it can do before we kill it. Don't bother about the eyes, we already have a photo of that and first-hand experience what happens when you look at them.

"This isn't an impossibility, so if our cover gets blown and the thing starts attacking, it can take priority over the egg sack things but not the civilians being used as batteries - they are top billing behind the photos. Yatsu, you and I will be on guard duty if that happens - we're objectively the heaviest hitters and so can most likely deter it for the longest." The giant nodded, then Coco turned her attention back to her Mate. "Got any good ones of it yet hun?"

"Yeah, I've got a few. We just need to get down there once it's gone."

"Alright. Everyone know what they're doing?" Once there was confirmation from everyone else, Coco grinned. "Grand. Now we wait until this thing has a wonder around the caves before we drop down - I reckon it's going to come back here the second someone comes down from there." The students lay low and waited for their chance to strike, with Jade joining them. Although the Grimm was blind, getting out of practices like laying low could be costly, so Coco always enforced the fact that they will always be doing them regardless of the situation. Obviously, she was a little laxer on it, but she still made sure everyone was low.

15 minutes later the clicking had subsided, indicating that the beast had wondered back to the main labyrinth of tunnels. That was their cue to start the photographs, as doing this would give them a bit more time to rescue people rather than having the beast be 100 metres away and it appearing in a matter of seconds rather than minutes - and in a rescue mission, those seconds can mean the difference between life and death. Coco sent her own and Fox's girlfriend down the quick way so that they could take as many pictures as they needed, then when they were done, they could start _looking for_ a way to free everyone. The remaining four would work backwards and go down the lower fork to lead to the open cavern space that the two photographers were currently in. It also meant that they could see where the beast was heading and, by the time they got to the main cavern, it should be far enough away to give them plenty of time to evacuate. They did as such, waiting out of sight near the fork as the Grimm was still prowling around that area, its clicking immensely loud in their ears.

Two pairs of mirror lens protected eyes rounded the corner to spy the creature, surrounded by its tell-tale black mist. What they did not expect to happen was the Grimm to purposely dissolve itself over the course of 20 seconds into the waterway running down the middle of the cavern floor, the only sign of it being there the inky black colour the water now took. Of course, it made very little difference when everywhere else was shrouded in shadows as well, but they figured out based on the shrinking of the grotesque form into nothing, and the fact that Yatsuhashi was smart enough to not be shocked by it like Coco was and actually took photos of it dissolving itself.

" _That was... completely and utterly disgusting_ " Coco signed as the Grimm essentially swam away from them. Once it was completely out of the way, Coco reverted to a soft whisper. "Stay out of the water, it might be able to feel everything better in there." As they trudged their way back using the torch to guide them and avoiding any and all puddles of water, the fashionista turned to her fast thinking teammate. "Oh, and thanks for the impromptu photo shots."

"It's not a problem Coco" he calmly replied. They made it back to the cavern relatively quickly. They would have arrived sooner, but they tried to avoid every single pool of water they could, which meant they had to take turns jumping over one part of their path that was more or less completely puddled. Velvet and Neo were looking around one of the people, the former talking to the person as they seemed to be relatively okay in comparison to some of their fellow captives.

"What's the verdict Velvs?" Coco asked once they got closer again. "What's been said?"

"Well, they said that the stuff they're being held up in is near impossible to break out of without help."

"That's true," Jade added, "even Juliette couldn't break out of it." The caramel coloured woman made a mental note to quiz Jade on why she thought Juliette would be able to break out of it if these guys couldn't.

"What was also said was that the Grimm constantly uses their energy and feeds it into those eggs over there, barely keeping any for itself."

"That must mean whatever's in those things are clearly very important to it - we can't let it use them, whatever they are." Velvet nodded at her Mate's deduction, then turned to the people suspended in the air.

"We need to get them out of here fast, so what's the game plan?" Everyone huddled in as Coco began laying out the quick mini-briefing.

"Yatsuhashi and I need to be kept free in case the Grimm arrives, so we'll be ushering people out only. Jade, you know this place best so are you alright to be on the far end showing people where to go?" The greenette nodded. "Plus, you don't have a weapon we could use to get them down... kinda leaves you at an impasse. That leaves Velvet, Fox and Neo - I want you to start from the furthest end and work back towards the exit. One of you cuts them down, the next person helps them up, there's a third person to meet them halfway between there and Jade; I don't care how you do it, just make sure it's done, and that it's done well. Yatsu and I will help ushering, but only whilst the coast is clear." The three of them made it known that they understood the task set and then broke off to go through how they would do it. Jade went to take up her post before Yatsuhashi grabbed her arm.

"Are you okay?" she queried, his face showing signs of worry far more than she was used to with him.

"I meant what I said outside," he began, "about me truly caring for you and seeing you as part of this little family now. Don't do anything drastic."

With a soft smile, she answered. "I won't. I promise." She reached up with her other hand and gently grasped his with her own, relaying her thoughts and feelings through the simple gesture, then parted to stand post whilst he did the same. The three who were cutting people down had already begun on doing so. Fox used his blades to slice through the go holding their hands up, causing them to fall to the floor, but Neo was there to catch them before they hit the ground. The second he removed the first person from his prison, the roar of the Grimm reverberated throughout the caves.

"It knows we're here," Coco called out, "get these guys down and out as fast as possible! Yatsu and I will hold it off for as long as possible, just get them gone. Jade," she said to the woman now halfway across the cave in nothing less than a shout, "make sure to keep them safe if it comes through that entrance." Rather than waste her own voice, the neon green eyed woman simply raised her thumb in acknowledgement. Fox sliced the bonds at their feet too whilst Neo unbound their hands. From there, Velvet escorted them to Coco, asking her to get them close to the exit. She also assured her Mate that they had a contingency plan for when the Grimm arrived. Fox had already sliced through the bonds of the next couple of people - it really wasn't that difficult of a task, especially considering Jade did it by herself before she even had her Aura unlocked.

It was only after the fifth person was en route to where Jade was and the sixth and seventh had been severed from their holds did the Grimm come for them. As she had expected, it did not come back through the same entrance and exit as before, implying that it was much like a maze system in here with this open space as almost the centre of it. "It's here!" she warned her teammates. "Yatsu, be ready. Everyone else, avoid looking directly at it if you can." Everyone acknowledged her orders as she unfolded her Gatling gun and began spraying bullets in its general direction. She knew she couldn't kill it here and now, because they needed photographic evidence of what it can do, so keeping it at bay was her only objective. The final person was free from their holds not long after the beast had turned up, with Fox and Neo helping the blond man suspended out towards the exit. Velvet re-joined the fight, keeping at a distance but also helping with deterring the beast where necessary. All seven people made it out with next to no worries, and Jade was escorting the final person out of the cave.

' _Something doesn't seem right,_ ' Neo mentioned to her boyfriend as they took up their places by their teammates' side, ' _this seems far too easy._ '

"As much as I love easy fight, I have to agree." The monster really didn't put up a fight at all, shying away from every attack thrown at it and on the defensive for most of the encounter, now that its hypnosis trump card had been outplayed. It swung a single tentacle towards the group, but those near to the impact point barely needed to move due to the sluggishness of the attack and inaccuracy of the swing. "Okay, something _definitely_ doesn't seem right" Fox commented again, this time to the group as a whole and not just Neo.

"There's no way a Grimm that had posed this much of a threat to the resort should be this easy to deter; I'm with Fox." On the giant's words, the creature threw one last swing at them, heading straight towards the mute. She didn't even move, rather she let the tentacle come down on her. But in the blink of an eye she had unsheathed her hidden blade from her parasol and thrust it upwards, meeting the creature's appendage with her own weapon. The impact was felt by the petite woman, but she fought through that in order to deal as much damage as she could from the one strike. The Grimm recoiled in sheer agony at the pain of a blade piercing an appendage, a sound that hurt everyone's ears but wasn't unbearable like the last major Grimm they fought. In a surprise twist, the creature fled to the pods and spewed something on them, then proceeded to escape as best as it could through the exit from before.

"Why would it run?" Velvet pondered out loud, watching as the outer layer of the eggs melted away, taking photos as it dissolved. No one was prepared for what exited the eggs though.

A single black form fell from each of them, all about the same size and shape as the last. But then it started to morph. Some growing slightly, others shrinking, but all shifting their structures to resemble something a lot more human. The white bony structures began emerging from the skin of them, adding much needed contrast to the inky black of the skin. Neo noticed first what they were morphing into, Fox second.

"That's... impossible..." he gasped out. The other three saw as well, all in an equal state of terrified awe, as Grimm versions of Viola, Lulu, Quentin and Nylan of Team HLQN stood before them.

* * *

As promised, here is ' **Senseless** ' 76.

I wanted to do something else a little different with the Grimm, so yeah - it syphons energy from people and puts it into pods to create Grimm people. Weird? Yeah. Different? Also yeah.

Also, some of you might have seen, I've got another story just gone up not ten minutes ago: ' **Call of the Raven** '. Give it a looksee if it peaks your fancy, but be warned, it's got some spoilery stuff from the latest few chapters of Volume 6 in it.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	77. CFVYN vs HLQN… sort of

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"What the actual _fuck?!_ "

Those were the first words to come out of anyone's mouth after the four Grimm versions of their Second Year comrades had solidified and stood opposed to them, staring with the signature red and gold eyes of a Grimm. Unsurprisingly, the words came from Coco, but they weren't said without reason. All the fake-HLQN Grimm appeared exactly like their real-life counterparts - the obvious difference being the colour of this 'team's' skin and clothes - and that resemblance was more than unnerving. The Grimm team stood wordlessly where they formed, one or two of them cocking their heads every so often to show that they weren't dead or inactive.

"Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Because I'll be the first to admit I have no clue." No one replied to Fox's comment, a clear sign that they too had no idea what was happening. The fact the creature not only hypnotise people, but also could replicate another person's complete appearance made it a strange creature to say the least.

"Neo? Velvet? You... uh... you might want to... get some photos of this..." Coco managed to utter out. The mute responded first, taking out her Scroll and snapping a single image of the four fake-humans. The shutter closed with the trademark sound and the flash blinked, and the moods of these creatures spun on a dime. Their eyebrows furrowed, and their sharp teeth growled at the woman. Fake-Nylan dashed forward and landed a speed enhanced punch to the ice cream girl's stomach, knocking the wind out of her and sending her flying backwards into the wall.

"Neo!" Both men ran to her side to ensure her safety whilst the Mates formed a protective wall between the two groups. "Ni, are you okay?"

' _I so want to punch fake Nylan now._ ' Fox sighed with relief at the fact she wasn't out of it and was frankly more annoyed than hurt - her Aura must have taken a large portion of the impact with the floor and wall, but not the punch; her heavily rising and falling chest was evident that her breath was well and truly knocked right out of her. The woman winced slightly as her boyfriend helped her up, but was otherwise okay as they made their way to stand side by side with their teammates.

"It appears the Grimm constructs share the same traits as the actual team," came the observation from the group's tank, "if Nylan's copy is anything to go by. We need to mindful of what they could actually do."

"Agreed." Coco glanced around quickly, taking in their opponents - their familiarly unfamiliar opponents. "As much as I don't want to do this; Neo, we need you on photo duty. We need to match them as equally as we can, and Velvet's more suited to take on Lulu than you are. Plus, it means you get to jump in once you're done." Coco always knew how to push the right buttons and say the right things to truly get Neo on their side, and letting Neo tag in to help fight whoever she pleased once she was done was like hitting the jackpot. The mute grinned a wicked grin, then vanished into shards. The sound aggravated the faux-students and they lowered themselves ready to attack. The fashionista called out their individual target, knowing that fighting was on the horizon. "Fox, take Nylan. She's quick, but you've got experience."

"Right."

"Velvs, keep Lulu at a distance. Get her to use her beams - if she can do that, it'll be great to see it and capture it. Understand Neo?!" she called out to the cave, unsure of where the teleporter had disappeared to.

"... she understands," Fox clarified.

"Yatsu, care to dance with Quentin this time?"

"Careful," the Faunus warned, "if this thing's anything like the real Quentin, he might like that you're dancing with him."

"I appreciate the humour Velvet, but I doubt a Grimm would show sexual preferences. Plus, I'm spoken for." Velvet let out a light giggle, then immediately had to raise her guard to defend against a Chakram flying her way.

"Okay, they can copy their weapons too... great," Coco sarcastically noted as Fake-Viola's hammer constructed itself from the creature's body. The dark entity edged towards her at a pace, weapon ready to go. The fashionista refolded her handbag so that it was back in that form as opposed to its cumbersome Gatling gun configuration and held the handle tight, ready for the first swing. Sure enough, the hammer was hauled over the shoulder of its wielder for an offensive attack, one that Coco matched with an upswing of her handbag. Both weapons impacted, then recoiled from the sheer counter force of the blow, but neither person relented or let that stop them as they each went in for another attack.

The clash of the two leaders' swords was a tell-tale sign that the fighting could truly begin, as Fake-Quentin made its way towards Yatsuhashi, battle axe formed and ready to battle with. Rather than unsheathe his Greatsword, the gentle giant rather advanced towards his opponent unarmed and bated it into taking the first swing, which it did; the swing was a powerful side swipe aiming right for the student's upper torso. The creature clearly wasn't expecting what happened next, as the swing came close to impacting the giant stuck his hands out and carefully caught the blade between his palms. The Fake-Quentin struggled to dislodge the axe from the iron like grasp of the imposing student, try as it might, and after he had felt he'd toyed with the creature enough Yatsuhashi grasped the blade and upper handle tighter and started to spin the creature around. It only took three spins to build up enough momentum to throw the creature away without having to even let go of the weapon. The inky black person hit the ground hard, but rather than continue on with the momentum it deformed into a puddle on impact, then with a low flash of faint jasper red light it reformed back into the shape of the faux student. Yatsuhashi noted how the creature also reformed its weapon from itself, but the version of it that Yatsuhashi was holding had started to melt away before it could creature the new version. He was so focussed that he almost didn't hear the *Click!* coming from nearby, but the flash of the camera he certainly did notice.

With a small smirk, he commented, saying, "I hope the photograph comes out well Neo." Naturally, he didn't attempt to look around to see where she was, as that would a) give away her position if he found her, something they couldn't afford to let happen, and b) distract him from his own fight, opting to finally ready his own Greatsword instead. He could have called out that point to his teammates, but he believed they would figure it out eventually on their own.

Fox was the first to strike between him and Fake-Nylan. The kick thrown its way narrowly missed its head as it ducked underneath the swing, countering with an uppercut that tried to clock him in the jaw. Despite the creatures' accuracy earlier, the kinks very clearly hadn't been worked out of it just yet.

' _There still seems to be some spacing issues with this thing._ ' Unfortunately, Fox was too distracted by his own thought to realise that the uppercut was in fact a distraction to hit him with another attack - it spun round from the uppercut and smashed its body elbow into his face, drawing blood instantly. ' _Shit! Never mind..._ '

*Click!*

' _That one was for me,_ ' Neo mentioned from her hiding spot, ' _it was too good not to pass up. Also, I've deduced that they are more tactical than they let on, despite how primitive they look._ '

' _I got that much_ ' he internally grunted back, blocking more of the punches thrown his way. It tried for a straight punch for the head, but Fox knew how to deal with one of them easily and spin it back on the opponent. He leaned backwards, bending his knees to drop well below its natural attack range, and let the momentum from the punch carry it over where his body was moments ago. From there, he fell back onto his hands and elbows bringing his feet off the floor and his knees tucked up to his chest, Fake-Nylan still not recovering from the momentum of its last attack. With a grunt to accentuate, he thrust all his weight through his hands to push himself up and through his legs to shoot them out, bringing both of his feet crashing into what would be the ribs of the creature, forcing it off its feet and flying away from him. He landed as the faux-student was still reaching the apex of its flight, so he dashed forward towards its landing spot. Copper brown eyes figured out the trajectory, so when he got close, he jumped to intercept the creature, unfolding his weapons as he did. With a swing from his non-dominant arm he made contact with it and sent it flying down to the ground with a bullet backed punch, followed up by him falling towards the ground exactly on top of where Fake-Nylan would be. He extended his blades on his gauntlets completely and aimed for its heart area. He slammed into the ground, his blade driving into the rock below. Unfortunately, there was no body in between the blade and rocks, for the creature melted away back into its oozing first form that seemed incapable of being dealt any damage, but equally incapable of dealing any either. "Well, that's a pain," he groaned as there was another flash of jasper light before the imitated body of Nylan rose from the dark puddle once more.

' _Don't kill it yet Fox,_ ' Neo reminded, ' _I still need some photos_ _ **and**_ _I want to punch that one myself._ '

' _Well hurry up with the photos then._ '

Fake-Lulu was relentless, much like how its real-life counterpart could be. Velvet had to constantly jump over, bob under and dodge around every attack that got too close to hit her - but the relentlessness of her opponent didn't rule her out of delivering some punishment too, she just had a harder time than her teammates doing so. Knowing how close everyone was together, she opted against using he own weapon just yet, it wasn't about killing them until Neo had all the information she needed. The Faunus jumped back, baiting the creature to throw the Chakram her way, which happened. Both the smaller and larger of the creature's construct weapons flew at her, so she waited until the very last second before she ducked and let them sail over her head, and as they did, she bounded towards her enemy with determination, especially knowing that it was going to be unarmed now. But much like Yatsuhashi, Velvet learnt the hard way that these things can 'regrow' their weapons from their bodies as the imitation woman pulled two more Chakram from its body and readied a strike at the Rabbit.

Using her agility, the Faunus spun mid-air with frightening precision, letting the fake blades slice very close to the young woman's body, as she practically slammed into the creature, knocking it off balance. Both re-centred themselves as they prepared for a second bout of fighting with one another. The phoney centred first, so it shot forward without the curtesy to wait for the Faunus to ready themselves beforehand. Velvet saw the attack coming about two seconds before it impacted, and realised she needed to react about half a second too late; the dark fist connected squarely with the young woman's jaw and knocked her back a few metres, her cry of pain heard throughout the cave system.

Jade's head turned at the sound as she escorted the final person out from the caves, the gentleman's head turning too.

"Are they going to be alright in there with that thing?" he inquired, panic filling his voice at the knowledge of what the Grimm could do to people. Jade stared back at the caves, looking in and wondering if they truly _were_ going to be okay.

"Of course they will; they're Huntsmen and Huntresses-in-Training. The team is actually the highest-ranking team of their year, so there's honestly no better trainee team from Beacon than these five, _and_ this was the team that first documented a Nuckelavee Grimm when they first defeated one two May's ago."

"You sure do know a lot about them," he teased in jest, "you a big fan of their work?"

"I'm very close friends with a member of the team, we've known each other for a while and in that time, I learnt about the team." She knew it was a little white lie, but the alternative of 'I am actually in a partnership with one of the boys in there; it's not a relationship because he doesn't feel any romantic attraction but he sees a physical one so he said this would be a decent compromise that isn't hurting one whilst alienating the other - even though it kind of is for me' was far too long winded and was also not the sort of thing she was wanting to blurt out to strangers she'd know for the best part of a minute.

' _You blurted out everything to Yatsuhashi within the first time you met him_ ' she chastised herself.

' _He doesn't need to know_ _ **that**_ _either_ ' came her own reply.

"I trust your recount of their achievements, young miss. Are you joining the rest of us back to the resort?"

The greenette smiled, a confident gesture on the surface to hide the screaming inside of her saying, 'What are you doing?! Why are you going to go back?' "No, it's my fight just as much as it is theirs - I've said I'd help them whenever I can, and now is that time." The man smiled at her, taking what she said at surface value without paying attention to the looks she was subtly giving to show that wasn't her true feelings on the matter.

"I wish you all luck, and I hope you send that thing back to the hellscape it came from." She nodded as he jumped into the lake behind her, completely washing any excess goo or mental influence the Grimm held over him. Once he was gone, she made her way back inside, hoping to find herself some use.

Coco struggled up; she never remembered Viola hitting that hard. Then again, this thing wasn't Viola. It wasn't her in the same way Fox wasn't fighting Nylan, Yatsuhashi wasn't battling Quentin and Lulu wasn't the one who smashed Velvet across the face, distracting the gunner both from her scream and the feeling of pain shooting through her Mark, a lapse in concentration that Fake-Viola exploited and kicking Coco down with a well-placed slimy boot to the centre of her chest.

"I hope... you got that... Neo," the fashionista panted to the unseen photographer as she stood upright once more, "'cause I am _not_... getting kicked... by that thing... again..." Her response came in the form of a message to her Scroll, one she looked at immediately.

 **'** ** _2 files attached. Click_** ** _here_** ** _to view_** **'** One of the photos sent to her were of Fake-Viola kicking Coco in the gut from far away to get the entire shot in, the second was a surprisingly good close up of Coco's pain face. Ignoring the pain face photo to look back on and laugh when she wasn't in a mess fighting in a Grimm's Nest, she focussed on Fake-Viola's body when she kicked her. Coco spotted the small jasper light coming from the gooey beast's foot.

"Hey, did anyone else notice these things glowing at any point?"

"When mine crashed into the ground, I saw the light before it reformed," the giant said as he battled the creature to a standstill.

"Same here," Fox added, dodging a swing at his head and redirecting the faux-person into the nearby wall. It crashed, exploding into a puddle of goo and slowly started dripping down the wall. But with a small flash of red, the goo reformed on the wall and the creature stepped out onto the floor once more. "It did it again just now! Every time it falls apart, it's using that energy to rebuild itself."

"That must have been what it was injecting into the pods from earlier - it's using other people's energy to fuel these things. Which means-"

"Which means that these things aren't invincible" Fox deduced at the same time as Coco.

"Exactly! We don't need to 'kill them', we just need to outlast them and force them to use their stored energy on reconstructing their body until there's none left. Fox, have a word with Neo. Everyone else, keep fighting! Until she's done, just try to keep the battle on even terms." The fashionista dashed forward to re-engage with Fake-Viola as Fox deliberately took a punch and sent himself flying away from the monster's sight. It gave him more time to speak with Neo. Through the faint dust cloud kicked up when he landed, the copper haired boy scurried away and hid behind a large rock near the edge of the cave system.

' _So, how much of that did you hear?_ ' he asked, not knowing where his girlfriend was in the cave. Her formed started shimmering into existence a few metres to his left, the woman walking over with a confident smirk on her face and a slight sway in her hips.

' _Most of it - these things use stolen energy to power themselves, so we need to get them to forcefully exhaust their supply through either getting them to constantly reform their bodies or have them using energy infused attacks that will drain them._ ' She sat down next to him, hiding from the creature who at present was just staring towards where he landed instead of where they now were.

' _More or less. Are you ready to join us in the fray, or are you still taking pictures?_ ' Before she even got a chance to answer, the sound of running could be heard on the high ledge. The hiding pair peaked out and saw Jade sneaking in and hiding up there once more.

' _You know exactly what my next comment is going to be now, don't you?_ ' Fox said nothing; he and Neo had been together for long enough, especially with this link in their minds, that they felt words - even thoughts - at times were too much. Fox took Neo's hand in his own and smiled, then in an instant the pair had teleported from their hiding spot up to the high balcony once again.

"Jade, it's us" Fox whispered, doing his best not to frighten the neon green eyes out of the woman's skull.

"How's it going down there?" she replied, not fazed by their sudden appearance.

"Not too bad, but we're not making progress. These things seemingly have nigh-infinite stamina, so will never tire. But we've spotted something - they give off this low red light whenever they hit us with a powerful strike or reform their body. That's their Aura, essentially, and those are the only times they use it. We're going to try and wear them out, make them use that stolen Aura pool and win that way. But we need Neo down there, so we were wondering if yo-"

"Sure thing, just pass the Scroll." The pair were a little surprised that she managed to suss out what Fox was about to suggest before he even said it, but going off how the conversation was going, it seemed inevitable that they would ask eventually. Neo unlocked her Scroll and passed it off to Jade, who smiled a silent thank you.

"Take as many as you can, but keep the flash off this time - we don't want them finding you up here with little to no way of defending yourself." Swiping at a few things on screen changed the settings. She tested them out by snapping a quick shot of the couple next to her.

"Yeah, flash is off, and the sound has been muted. I'll be as quiet as I can otherwise." Neo gave a thumbs up and Fox nodded as they stared out to battle. The Fake-Nylan had grown bored of waiting and slowly started making its way towards Yatsuhashi and Fake-Quentin.

' _What do you say Ni? Death from above?_ '

' _I still need to punch that thing first, but yeah - sounds fun._ ' They adjusted their sunglasses and held hands once more as they unsheathed their weapons. Neo blinked the pair of them high above the copy version of the Cheetah Faunus, still blissfully unaware of their presence. They came down on her like a tonne of anything, Fox's blade slicing through its back whilst Neo's blade pierced straight through its would-be skull. The creature let out what was akin to a scream as its dark mass crumpled down into nothing more than a puddle on the floor. ' _I hope we didn't kill that thing, I still_ _ **really**_ _need to punch it._ ' They backed away, readying their stances. Coco noticed the pair of them and grinned.

"Neo's back, don't hold back anymore!" The beret totting woman unclipped her handbag once more and used it to knock the phoney leader around a little. Yatsuhashi, who was been struggling pretty evenly against the Fake-Quentin, began smirking as he pushed back against the dark form of his opponent - the swordsman clearly holding back in spades as he near effortlessly started pushing the creature back. Velvet panicked slightly on hearing Coco's request, but she couldn't let her emotions get the better of her, she knew that Coco could feel when she was off. She _had_ been giving it her all already, was she not supposed to? This creature was a tough and relentless beast, it was hard for her not to go all out from the get-go.

The puddle near the sorbet couple flashed once. Then a second, and that time things started to move. And a third, but no real progress. After the fourth flash, the creature began reforming its body, a sight which Neo smirked at.

' _Perfect._ '

' _That took a lot out of it, look. It's panting a little, and it took four attempts for it to actually start re-growing itself. You'll need to get your punch off quick, else it won't be around to get punched soon enough._ '

' _You're just fuelling the fire,_ ' she mentioned, her smirk growing darker and her grip on her weapon swapping to a reverse grip, ' _keep going._ ' Fox swore he saw the expression on Fake-Nylan's face shift to panic on seeing Neo starting to edge towards it.

The dual haired leader kept pushing the creature back with each and every attack. She wasn't faster than this copy, she wasn't stronger - well technically she _was_ stronger, but the creature could greatly amplify its physical attacks with borrowed-Aura far better than any Huntsman or Huntress ever could, and she was certainly a lot less durable than her opponent due to its almost fluid like body. But there were a few things she was that it wasn't; she was smarter, she was more tactical, she had better control over her own Aura...

And she could do this.

Coco knocked the creature back slightly with an elbow to the face, but didn't press the attack any further. Instead, she reattached her weapon to her belt and then stood where she landed, perfectly calm and still, channelling her Aura to flow throughout her body as one giant mass. It was a risky move, she knew that, but the rewards for it working could greatly outweigh the risks of it not. The faux-student recovered and dashed straight towards the gunner. It aimed for a punch straight at her chest.

' _That makes my life so much easier_ ' she thought to herself. Anywhere else may have been a bit much for her body to handle, and the risks would have started piling up in favour of things going disastrously wrong. As the swing came from the gooey skinned being, Coco let all her Aura flood to that single spot on her body. Rather than the shield of an Aura surrounding her entire body, Coco was focussing everything into that one general area. The immediate effect of doing so was evident, as she didn't so much as flinch at the attack, and the Fake-Viola looked up in shock and surprise. Now, for the more taxing half of the move. Coco threw her Aura out from that spot, knocking her opponent back as she forcefully expelled some of her energy in a single wave from there, then she let her Aura migrate into her fist as the creature continued to stumble. The punch she landed had the entirety of her Aura backing it up, so it was no surprise that the head of the creature literally exploded when she hit it, but in doing so forced nearly 10% of her Aura out in those two moments. The attack was devastating, but the drawbacks make it a move she seldom used. The body remained upright for a couple of seconds before it slumped down to its knees.

The fashionista, satisfied with her work, started to walk away to help someone out - most likely Velvet - before the body began twitching again. "Really?" she groaned as the head started reforming, the flashing jasper light proving that it took a lot more effort that it originally expected to regrow that body part. "I can't be dealing with this shit now." She walked around the body at speed so that she was facing away from everybody else, then finally unfolded her handbag into its larger, more destructive Gatling gun form. Once the head had reformed, Fake-Viola spun its head to see where its enemy had disappeared to, only to be greeted with six spinning barrels and a grinning young woman. There was no time to even react as the bullets riddled its body and reduced it to nothing more than a mess on the floor. Coco didn't let up though, she kept the gun whirring away until she knew she didn't need it anymore. The faint jasper light blinked a few times from the puddle before it faded out completely. As it did so, the goo finally started evaporating into the black mist synonymous with a defeated Grimm. With a sigh of relief, she called it out to her comrades. "They can be defeated, just wear 'em down!"

Fake-Quentin probably heard that, but was most likely too simple of a being to register its meaning. The man it was battling though, he heard it and understood it perfectly. "Fox," he called, his deep booming bass voice resonating through the cave system, "you got any Ice Dust on you?" He swung his Greatsword around, cleaving his dark opponent in two.

"Sure do. Take it!" The tank caught the flying vial of cyan Dust, carefully storing it in his pocket. He was going to use it, just not right now. The jasper red flash came, and the creature reassembled its body, looking worn out from its repeated reformation. Yatsuhashi had seen both Fake-Nylan's attack from Fox and Neo, and he had seen Fake-Viola's demise at the hands of his leader, and from that he had deduced that inhibiting the head made re-growing itself much more difficult than if the arm or leg was removed. As the upper and lower parts of its body formed into one once more, the creature wasted no time in going on the offensive. The battle axe came swinging for the giant, aiming directly for his ribcage, but the man's shoulder dropped, letting the sode of his left arm take the impact instead. In retaliation, the swordsman spun around and went for a large sweeping strike in an effort to catch his opponent, but the dark skinned creature instead raised its arm and let the blade impact it instead, a red light pulsing through as steel and stolen Aura collided.

Most people would be taken aback by the manoeuvre pulled, but Yatsuhashi saw only progress in that happening. The creature was getting desperate and was almost carelessly throwing away its Aura to protect itself, and that made things easier in the long run. The swordsman backed off, letting the creature attack him once again, and already it was drawing from the pits of the pool of Aura it had been given and was essentially on its last legs. It was attacking slower than before, and its hits seemed weaker. Yatsuhashi knew he had won the fight, he just needed to make it official. The faux-student went for another large downwards swing to potentially try and cleave the man it was fighting in half. Sadly for it, the weapon was stopped by a single hand, Yatsuhashi using his Aura to keep it there and to stop it from slicing his skin. With his free hand, he brought the blade up in a harsh diagonal movement, slicing the tar like construct into two pieces. The top half slid down with the left arm whilst the lower half and right arm remained where they were. Yatsuhashi threw the part still staying where it was away from him, getting as much distance between the two parts as possible, then walked up to the half of the creature with the head still present. As he pulled the small vial of Ice Dust from his pocket, he saw the jasper glow inside the creature and he knew he couldn't be careful with this anymore, and so instead of only using a decent amount to freeze the torso he threw the entire vial to the floor, shattering it and stopping any progress it was planning on making in its tracks. The glow pulsed a few times, the body inside still trying to reconnect with the body outside, before eventually it died away. The giant watched as the external half faded away as a black mist, and the part inside the ice started to do the same, but with no escape. So, he shattered the ice with a crash of his hilt.

Even though it wasn't a person per se, Neo was having so much fun toying with the Fake-Nylan that she and Fox were double teaming. The real Nylan was far faster than she was - and they both knew that - but this imitation of her didn't have nearly the same amount of experience as her or the same control over the Aura it possessed, so the gap closed at an incredible rate. By this point, that gap was widening again, although this time in Neo and Fox's favour. Neo could get in close faster than the copy could react, most of her hits from her parasol connected because she was attacking faster than it could defend.

There was no other word to describe what was happening; Neo was truly toying with it.

Fox stood back for the most part, dashing in to land a couple of small hits on it and keep its attention askew every now and again, but ultimately, he let Neo deal with it as she wanted to. Fake-Nylan tried to strike her, but the ice cream girl simple smirked and shattered, confusing the creature. Neo rematerialized behind it, and as it turned to see her Neo caught it right in the pseudo-jaw with a roundhouse punch, sending it straight to ground.

' _I'm glad I got that out of my system - we can kill it now._ '

' _Thanks for giving me permission_ ' Fox replied sarcastically.

' _You're welcome._ '

"I was being sarcastic" he replied, her answer warranting a verbal response from him as opposed to a mental one.

' _I know._ ' She walked over to it once again, taking her hidden blade out from the parasol and driving it into the creature's head. That didn't kill it outright, but Fox leapt in and decapitated the creature whilst Neo threw the body out of the way. Now it needed to focus not only on healing but also reassembling its body. It didn't even get a chance, as two flashes later it began evaporating. ' _That was fun._ '

"We're not done yet." The pair glanced over to Velvet, who was facing off against the last construct - the imitation Lulu. And from the looks of it, she was fairing worse than her opponent.

Fake-Lulu landed a kick that the Rabbit almost didn't block with her arms, then a second after that, then a third and fourth. On the fifth, the force behind it broke her guard and she flailed slightly, then with a sixth more powerful side kick, she was sent flying back.

"Hey!" Coco shouted from the side, drawing the dark construct's attention. "That's my partner and girlfriend you just kicked. You're not going to live to regret that one." Coco dashed in, handbag out and ready, as her weapon collided with the gooey person's Chakram. The fashionista tried being forceful and offensive, but ultimately Fake-Lulu was indeed much more relentless than she was, and the tides turned within the space of a minute. But they came back, as Yatsuhashi came in to fight as well. It still managed to hold its own against them; Yatsuhashi took a swing that it dodged, but then it had to parry a strike from Coco, only to now block another attack from Yatsuhashi, then another, then Coco would attack again, and so on. It was getting desperate, and then when Fox and Neo started attacking too it realised that the fight was one it was categorically not going to win.

Velvet pulled herself up off the ground to see her teammates all standing opposed to the creature and tried to join them, but the pain in her legs let gravity win that battle as she fell once again. What she didn't see was the creature starting to pulsate with a jasper glow and move its Chakram to its left arm, just like the real Lulu did.

Fox cried out to Jade, "you'd better get this!" referring to the fact he was pretty sure what the faux-student was about to do. Sure enough, the dark entity's glow started migrating to the arm with the fake Chakram.

"Neo, d'you think you could get all of us away in one?"

" _No guarantee Coco,_ " she signed back in complete honesty, " _but I can always try._ " The students moved closer together, all huddle near enough to Neo that they could reach out and touch her so they could all blink away together. They all knew that her teleportation was very limited, and that taking more than one of them with each blink severely exhausted her. Moving five of them was going to be extremely taxing on her, regardless of the distance travelled, but if it meant potentially saving their lives then she'd do what was asked of her.

It wasn't needed though, and not for reasons Team CFVYN were pleased about either.

Sure enough, Jade did as she was asked and was taking pictures of what was happening. But the fake version of Lulu noticed her briefly. And in doing so, made the entire mission infinitely more complicated. The creatures were somewhat tactical - that much they had discovered - so the evil grin that formed on its face immediately raised flags for the trainee protectors of the peace. As the glow shined its brightest, the faux-Persimmon angled its arm to point away from the quintet of warriors and instead fell on the direction of one lone, green themed woman on a high ledge.

The world seemed to move at a standstill as the glow began to spill out of the being's arm in a powerful beam that would ultimately wipe the untrained greenette off the face of Remnant. Pure adrenaline coursed through the veins of one of CFVYN as Yatsuhashi dashed towards the beam. No one registered what happened until after the giant was halfway across the space, and by the time the caramel tipped leader and her Mate cried his name to stop him he was standing with his arms apart, making himself as wide as he possibly could to block the attack.

Seldom had CFVN heard Yatsuhashi cry out in pain before. After hearing it now, they knew they didn't want to hear it again. The swordsman they knew as a brother, a young man known for keeping his emotions in check for the most part, screaming in agony as his body was aggressively bombarded with energy from the assailant. Four seconds of constant bombardment later, it stopped. The Fake-Lulu started smoking, its Grimm like body dissolving after having used all its energy to fry its target. Speaking of, Yatsuhashi fell hard, the impact he made on the floor starling everyone out of their shock and back into action.

"Yatsu!" Jade screamed, her instinct to jump straight of the ledge and make a beeline for him. Unfortunately for her, she had not mastered her Aura enough to control it and burst it to negate the impact of landing hard on the ground, a fact she only remembered after the adrenaline had subsided, she had already jumped from the ledge and was falling to be greeted with at least a few broken bones. Luck was on her side though, since Neo saw the instinctual jump she made and blinked over to catch her, for her teleportation was far faster than the speed Jade fell at. Once the greenette had been caught, the mute travelled the distance back to Yatsuhashi's side, and already there were streams of tears coming from Jade's neon green eyes, a colour that, having removed her Adel sunglasses to see him better, had misted over to the point of dulling to a near grey. The occasional flash on neon green though pulsed her Aura out and the remainder of Team CFVYN all simultaneously felt the sorrow she was feeling.

Fox turned his brother over to examine his wounds, and the sight made him wish he had never regained his own. His belt, robe and muscle shirt had all beam near enough vaporized by the attack, leaving only charred patches of cloth in their wake. His side had been blackened on one side from the beam, but otherwise remained intact. Worst of all was his skin - where the layers of clothing had been burnt away, what was covered beforehand certainly wasn't now, and that meant that his skin was directly in the firing line. As such, there were areas of his skin that had ceased to be, leaving only raw exposed muscle, darkened by the burning.

"Jeez, Yatsu... what was that about?" he muttered as he tried to get his friend's head on something a little bit more comfortable than the rocky ground - in this case, a jacket from both Neo and Fox folded up to provide support, leaving in her combat corset and Fox essentially topless. Neo certainly wouldn't be thinking about having her way with her incredibly attractive, topless-in-a-dark-cave boyfriend, because she had to attend to really the first friend who accepted her in the academy after hers and Fox's deaths, tears in her eyes as a side effect of being in close proximity to Jade's semblance.

"Had to..." was all he could manage before the pain of even talking overcame everything else.

"You're in real trouble, Daichi," Coco mentioned in a semi-teasing, semi-serious manner, "you could have gotten yourself killed just now. I don't want to have my team be a member down again - for real this time though." Her tone shifted, becoming much harsher as her emotions started to pile up. "You know fucking better to play the hero, so why now, huh?"

"Save... Jade..." She had to admit, she was not expecting that as a response, even though the woman in question was currently kneeling before her crying at his side.

The anger didn't truly subside, but it was shifted to the wayside as a ghost of a smile grew on her face. "Here that Jade?" The green eyed woman looked at the team leader, confused as to what had been said. "Yatsuhashi Daichi when against his own teachings for once in his life, all for you." Jade looked back at him, and the only thing he could do in response was to smile, though even that looked painful to do.

"Yatsu..." she sighed out in shock, lying beside him to offer him some form of physical and emotional comfort - a gesture he greatly appreciated. Having witnessed what she had, and the novelty passed, anger returned to the gunner of CFVYN, a mood change that Fox and Neo saw, but Velvet felt. However, she had the exact same thoughts as her Mate even before their Mark started glowing and their feelings were being broadcast to one another.

"Yatsu, we are going to move you outside. Once we have, Jade can get you in 'The Harvest' to ease the burns slightly and just remove the weight from everything, let you float around for a while. _We're_ going back in, and we are going to destroy that Grimm and everything in this Oum-forsaken mountainside!" Nods came from all around, eager to go on with the plan.

* * *

Fake Grimm people! It meant I could write Team HLQN fighting without writing _them_ fighting, if you catch my drift.

Plus, I think this has to be one of my favourite starting lines in any chapter I've written for the story ever.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	78. Call the Grimm a Akkorokamui

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The walk out was done in silence. Being 1-2ft taller than the rest of the team carrying you to safety did mean that there was a lot more deadweight than there would have been otherwise. So, to say that this was 'a challenge' would be grossly misusing the word, so the silence was more out of a need to reserve energy.

Both Coco and Velvet looked angry on the walk; one was angry not at Yatsuhashi for doing what he did, but at them for not doing something to stop it. Neo could have teleported to it, then sent it elsewhere in the cave system; any of the other three had weapons that could have shot across the gap - in either the literal or figurative sense - and drawn the gooey beast's attention away from Jade; there were many more options that were explorable, some of which weren't even that complicated to do or even think of, they just didn't register in time.

The other woman _was_ angry at Yatsuhashi. She didn't even care if it brought the Grimm to them, it meant it'd be killed quicker. His foolhardiness could have gotten him killed at least, and then there was the possibility his human blockade wouldn't work, and Jade got hit with the blast as well. The one silver lining she found was that, as it stood here and now, he was alive. And he now could say that he survived a point-blank Persimmon Beam, though if she had the final say in the matter, she would most definitely not want him to prove that fact, and she had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't want to either. And on top of his foolhardiness potentially costing him his life, thankfully not, it _did_ cost him his custom-made sunglasses. As a whole, they held together well as a frame, but the lenses had started to bubble under the intense heat of the blast, destroying a layer of the glass and rendering the mirroring effect on them useless, as well as just rendering the sunglasses useless as well. Even if she wanted him to join them back for the fight, she didn't have a spare pair on her to lend him.

Fox felt guilty, despite a completely clear conscience, for what happened to him. He honestly believed that, had he not said anything to Jade, she would have been missed completely by the creature and none of this would have happened. He couldn't know that the creature saw the greenette of its own accord, and as such that cloud of dread floating along with him, a constant fear that he was partially responsible for how his teammate was in the state he was.

Neo knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was so much more she could have done. Velvet may be the fastest member of the team physically, but over any distance more than 6 metres Neo's teleporting trumped anything else the team had to offer. She was thinking of all the different ways she could have prevented this from happening: teleport the creature away from them in two or three blinks, teleport to Jade and get her out of the way, get in close and attack it to disrupt the charging beam. Heck, she'd even go as far as to say, 'teleport in front of the blast yourself'. _Any_ of those options were better than the alternative laid out before her with Yatsuhashi in pain and with severe burns on his skin. He had a clean life, bar two known incidences, and didn't deserve this sort of thing, whereas she had lived a life of lying and stealing, sleeping around and killing whomever she pleased whenever she wanted to. Two opposite ends of the spectrum, and she felt she was on the end that deserved to be where he is now.

' _You're wrong, you know._ ' Neo's gaze turned to meet her boyfriend's beside her, his voice in her head soothing and calm, even if he didn't appear to be externally.

' _How?_ ' she simply replied.

' _Yes, you have done bad things. Things you regret now your life has changed, and things we as people who never had to walk that dark road would have ever done staying on the right path. But that doesn't make you more or less deserving of punishment._ '

' _But-_ '

"Neo," he spoke this time, earning a look from Jade briefly before her attention was drawn back to Yatsuhashi, "at the end of the day, this thing isn't about who deserved to be hurt and who didn't, it's about who _did,_ and this time Yatsu got the bad end of the stick. But on that, he was the one who jumped in the way of the beam, not us."

' _Yeah, but we could have done that too. I_ _ **should**_ _have done that. I should have done something,_ _ **anything**_ _, rather than stand there and watch as one of my best friends nearly gets himself killed due to an act of self-sacrifice._ '

"Yeah? Well I should have done that too. We all could have done that, but Yatsuhashi beat us to it. If anything, I'm actually glad one of us didn't jump in front of that blast - Yatsu's got the largest Aura pool out of all of us and is undisputedly the largest out of us. If anyone else had done that, there's no guarantee that Jade would have made it out unscathed or that whoever did that wouldn't have been vaporised. His Aura broke just before the beam stopped, so he basically survived the onslaught - pity his clothing didn't. You and I would have come out much worse than he did, Coco would have been knocking on Death's door and Velvet would not have survived; no sweet way of putting that one." The mute thought about that for a minute, then looked over at Yatsuhashi once again. To see their towering teammate hunched over like he was, his partner supporting him on his right and Coco on his left, barely managing to lift his feet off the ground with each and every step was heart-breaking. He was their rock; whilst Coco was in the figurative sense being the team leader, he was in their rock most literal sense. Seeing him like this lit something in Neo's heart.

' _We're going to make that creature pay for doing that,_ ' she growled, her eyes flitting to line up with her hair as her left fist crunched into a fist. ' _We are going to make it pay for everything that it did to him, to us, to everyone!_ '

"Yeah we are," Fox replied with a nod. He wasn't going to admit - out loud or in his head - that Neo was a tad frightening when she did that, but he agreed with her statement and shot her a brief grin that she reciprocated.

Having been the scout for the most recent part of their journey, Velvet was the first to see the waterfall exit that Jade had been using to get people out of the caves, and when she did, she removed her sunglasses and ushered everyone else to follow her out. The sun was hidden by the treeline now, but it was still light outside, and if they were completely honest the waterfall in the dusk light almost made up for the fact that they were a broken team with a mission not completed as of yet. Coco and Jade waded slightly into the water, the latter walking deeper in and pulling him out so that he could float on the water by paddling gently as she did the same. The weightlessness that came from treading water made things a little more bearable for the injured swordsman, but the problem was not completely elevated.

"Thank you for that." Speaking seemed a bit easier for him now that he'd had a little time to heal, but he could do nothing on his own, what with his complete lack of Aura, and instead was relying on Coco to share her with him on the journey there - but what she had shared had been expended too.

"No worries Yatsu." Velvet's gaze hardened much like Coco's did whenever they were about to do something of great importance. "Now, we've got a Grimm to find and beat the crap out of for hurting-"

"Call the Grimm a Akkorokamui."

The Rabbit was slightly taken aback by the name suggestion. "Ex... excuse you?"

"Back in my village, our elders told tales of a creature called an Akkorokamui. It was a sea-borne creature with the upper half of a human body and squid like tentacles. They said how that was a form taken by a minor God of the surrounding area, and that it could heal ailments if prayed to. Even if the kami is not real, the name seemed only fitting for the Grimm, seeing as it can create artificial human life and looks like a squid." The quartet of students left standing looked around at the others, wanting their own opinions on the suggestion - seeing as none of them verbal objected, they gave a non-verbal nod between the four of their acceptance, with Coco speaking out otherwise.

"An Akkorokamui it is then."

Fox pumped his wrists so that his gauntlets extended out into their aggressive modes. "Let's go kill it!" Neo was on board straight away, as was Velvet. Coco, on the other hand, had her more logical leadership beret on at that moment and stopped Velvet from taking another step.

"What's the matter?"

"Listen Velvet, I..." she sighed, removing her sunglasses to look at her Mate dead in the eyes, conveying her seriousness on the subject matter with a simple gesture. "I'm ordering you to stay here and look after Yatsuhashi and Jade. Phone through our transport and get it to land as close and convenient to here as you can so that there's as little movement of Yatsu as possible."

"Coco, why are you-" The Faunus' protest fell on deaf ears as the fashionista continued listing off her orders.

"Contact them as soon as we enter the cave system, get them here as soon as they possibly can. If we're not out by the time they arrive, head back to Beacon on your own - we'll make it there eventually."

"Coco, enough!" The team's leader did eventually stop herself from rambling into next week, and looked at her partner once again. "You are my team leader, with a far better tactical brain than I could ever have, so I'm not going to argue with you on your orders and decisions. However, you are also my girlfriend, my soulmate, my best friend - and as _those_ I want to know why you think leaving me here is a better move than having me by your side though this?" Normally, Coco had her sunglasses to hide behind, but it was clear she wanted this to be as genuine as possible. Velvet's first answer didn't come in the form of words, but a feeling. Both Mate's Marks began glowing and an emotion flooded through the Rabbit eared girl from her partner.

 _Fear._

"Coco?"

"It's not that I don't trust you, because that is not the case - I trust you with all of my heart and soul. If you think it's because I feel you're not capable to handle yourself, that's also not true - I've seen you battle giant Grimm on your own that, when we started Team CFVY three years ago, you never would have even engaged alone, much less defeat it. You are an amazing warrior Velvs. But I don't want you in there. This creature is driving me insane with the amount it is doing to hurt our team and tear us up - our first encounter with it, and now this? It seems to be playing more of a psychological game than anything else, and I am not letting it hurt you anymore."

"I'm not a child, I can fend for myself."

"Fully aware of that Velvs, but that's not it." Velvet's ears flattened slightly as her head cocked to one side, a sight the gunner couldn't help but let out a small giggle to herself before refocussing her efforts on explaining. "Three people are arguably going to be the best number to take this down with everything in play. Yatsuhashi and Jade need someone to protect them until evac arrives, and I'd want to put my trust in you on that front. Fox and Neo have a bond between them only they truly understand; it's one couples wish they had, and as team leader I can't just sit back and send people to their potential deaths whilst I stay back in peace and comfort."

"This is a suicide mission?!" she interpreted, her voice full of panic at the prospect.

"What? Oh, no. No, that was a bad example. I was just saying, what kind of leader would I be _if_ I let that happen? I wouldn't call that being a leader, I'd be calling that a job of military officers. As a team _leader,_ I need to be in there, and those two have the strongest pairing in the team - not to say other are weak, mind. It leaves you out of the loop, but you have a job to do as well."

"I understand what you are saying," the Faunus began, tears in her eyes, "but why? Is it because he jumped in the way of that blast?" On that, she turned her head towards Yatsuhashi, and to an extent Jade, floating in 'The Harvest'.

The caramel tipped woman sighed again. "Yeah, it is. Real talk, you're the one thing I couldn't live without, Velvet. You're two and a half years of my life I never would change for love or money, because everything I wanted was there with you. I'm not losing you to this thing, so I'm doing it to ensure your safety. I love you too much to lose you."

"What about them? Aren't you worried what will happen to them?"

"I am, all the time; it comes with the job of leader. But they jumped at the chance to fight it, so they know they're getting into." Velvet closed the gap between them, wrapping her arms around her Mate and hugging her close.

"You're not going to be dying on me either, alright? I love you too, and I'm not going to be losing you to a weird tentacle Grimm. We've dealt with tougher." She looked at Coco, who stared at her back. Their eyes spoke in sync, and they moved together for a brief kiss, their Marks flaring as their feelings were voiced.

 _Love. Protection. Pride._

As they broke away, Velvet sneakily leaned in and placed another chaise kiss on her girlfriend's chin before mentioning for her to keep safe and keep them safe as she walked to meet Fox and Neo at the entrance.

"You know me, cottontail."

"That's why I'm reminding you Coco."

"Ow." The fashionista smiled one last time before turning around and heading into the dark with the other fully-fledged couple in the team, their sunglasses reapplied as they knew they were fighting the creature itself this time. Velvet saw them in, and once they were out of sight, she called in for an evac at her current location.

' _Be safe Coco._ '

* * *

They were all aware they didn't have amazing tracking skills, and with a creature that could essentially morph itself into a puddle, it wasn't exactly going to be an easy task either. But the three of them weren't going to quit just because they couldn't find this thing. The creature broke their team, it impersonated and hurt their friends, and whether indirectly or not, Yatsuhashi is in a near-critical condition because of it; letting it live wasn't going to be an option to begin with.

Their first port of call was to return to the area where they had just fought in hopes that it may have gone back to salvage something. Sadly, that was not the case.

"That's a pain," Fox commented, "it would have been really easy to fight it in here."

Neo signed a response so that both parties could understand her. " _Not necessarily - remember, it knows the place better than we do and it could slither away like it did last time again._ " They agreed to that fact and headed out one of the newer exits for them. With the creature being blind and relying on echolocation to 'see' and navigate, it wasn't going to be silent at all, so their main focus was staying quiet and getting worked up as best as they could. Try as they might, Grimm can't fight the pull of negativity from a person, from anger, to sadness and even fear, so their anger at the Akkorokamui itself ought to be like an irresistible beacon to it, drawing it to them.

They trekked further, listening out for the clicking sound the beast made when finding its way.

Their journey took them deeper and deeper into the caves, their rage leading them down paths they'd never travelled before. Only after half an hour of blindly wondering did Coco speak up.

"This is pointless. We've walked through here for ages with no sign of it at all. As much as I'd hate to admit it, we might have to let it go for now." Initially reluctant to do so, the couple saw their team leader's way of thinking and started returning with her.

" _~Fox~_ "

The group froze where they were, hearing that sound again sent chills up their spines.

"Back to back, now!" Neo and Fox did as Coco ordered, the three of them now all facing outwards down the paths of the cave.

" _~Coco~_ "

On hearing her name, the caramel haired gunner grew furious, wanting nothing more than for the Akkorokamui to appear so that she could unload a rain of bullets into it.

' _Fox?_ '

' _Yeah?_ '

' _Think you can still use your semblance to track it? We don't want to give it any sort of advantage._ '

' _Good thinking Ni._ ' Fox shut his eyes, letting his world go black. It was a state he knew all too well from his years of blindness, but still it felt alien now. With a slight exhale, he let his Aura pulse, mapping the area around them. Coco's Aura still shone with a caramel light, but with the obvious hint of scarlet in her core. Neo faded between her pink and brown, passing through ivory in the middle, just as he remembered her when he first woke up in the park. Everywhere else was dark. Everywhere except...

"Coco, left!" She turned, and spotted the creature moving towards them at a rapid pace. The confined space of the cave they were meant that it took up the entire tunnel with its body, and Fox had to admit, the sight was terrifying to see. The second they saw it, the Akkorokamui roared at them, frightening them with its sudden appearance. "Neo, get us away from-" He didn't get to say any more before the creature and their entire surroundings changed with a slight swirl as Neo moved them from where they were to another area of the cave - it was significantly more spacious in this part than the tunnel before, which gave them a better chance of fighting it.

"Where's the Grimm going to come from?" Coco inquired, looking out at the multiple entrances and exits dotted around the area. "Fox, take those three over there; Neo, you look in those four; I'll look at the remaining- watch out!" No sooner had she started calling out their tunnels to look out for, the creature had somehow managed to sneak its way in through one of the entrances Coco was meant to be manning, the beret wearer only noticing and jumping out of the way seconds before a tentacle smashed into the rocks where she was standing. She landed with a bit of excess momentum, her boots trying to find footing in the rocks to slow herself down. Fox cocked his gauntlets and Neo gripped her weapon tighter as Coco steadied herself. Seeing the creature in full really gave a sense of scale of the Grimm. It stood 3.5 metres tall on its belly, and each of the tentacles looked to be at least twice its own height. It gave the creature impressive reach, and the bony barbs on the ends of each made it enough of a menace already. Adding on to the fact that the front most part of it was a giant mouth just made an already unsettling creature into a horrifying looking one.

The three of them all stared at the creature, anger in their eyes over what it had done to them and their friends over the past few months, not even including what it may have done beforehand. The Grimm stared back, looking at each of the three people in front of it, becoming more and more agitated with every passing glance.

" _It's usual way of trapping people isn't working,_ " Neo signed to her teammates, " _it's running low on options._ " Sure enough, the next sound that came from anyone was another cry from the Grimm, although this one sound far less aggressive and a little more frustrated.

"Fox, Neo; get in close!" Not needing to be told twice, the pair dashed in. Neo unsheathed her hidden blade and sliced at one of the tentacles as Fox went in and stabbed the creatures soft black hide with a punch. It roared in agony as it tried to swat them away, each swing from it missing its mark by miles. With its attention diverted away from her, Coco's Gatling gun started whirring. Once it was up to the right speed, she called out to the couple to get out of her way. They did so, and the Grimm barely had a chance to figure out what was happening before its body became riddled with hundreds of bullet holes in a handful of seconds. The Akkorokamui slumped, its body dissolving into the signature Grimm mist, its reign of destruction and terror over.

"Well, that was over... unceremoniously quick," the copper haired boy admitted, "I was hoping for more of a fight."

" _Same._ "

"It doesn't matter," came Coco's reply, "it's gone now. We defeated it and we won - now let's get back to the surface and reap the rewards." The couple agreed, removing their sunglasses and walking back towards the exit.

* * *

Now, I don't remember _exactly_ when, but I do remember writing an explanation for this. It'll be here in the next few chapters, I promise. And no, it's not because I wanted to cop out and not write a fight scene.

Now normally I wouldn't go rallying for this, but we are **ONE PERSON** **SHORT** of ' **Senseless** ' reaching 100 Favourites. So share around, help me breach that milestone

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated [as is a story favourite, if'in ye be inclined ;)]


	79. Back at Beacon, Safe and Sound

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Miss Scarlatina, we received your call for evac. Is everything alright?" The crewman of the Bullhead had jumped out and made his way over to where the Faunus was waiting, the large vehicle only able to get so close to the water's edge, leaving a good 100 metres between where it was and where they were now, and that wasn't including the distance between her and the two in the lake.

"For the most part, yes." The Rabbit girl began explaining the situation as they walked back towards Yatsuhashi. "We have a teammate down and in need of medical attention. He's conscious, breathing and his condition is stable, but he'd suffered a substantial amount of injuries." The pair walked over to the spot by the lake and saw Jade and Yatsuhashi in it, the larger man looking fairly burnt and bruised all over.

"I take it the gentleman is the one in need of aid?"

"Yeah. We need to get him back to Beacon Academy as soon as we possibly can." The crewman was questioning her reasoning internally - surely it would have been easier to get someone from the nearby resort to come out to them and transport them back. The entire journey there and back probably would have been done in as much time as a single journey from them in the aircraft, if not less. But he wasn't paid to argue, and he would only go against her wishes if he or the pilot deemed it detrimental to their passengers', the aircraft's or their own safety.

"Sure thing." He made his way closer to the water's edge as Jade brought him closer. When they got there, he managed to stand up and walk a lot better than he could before thanks to some Aura sharing with Jade, but with the injuries he had sustained he was eating through what she had provided at a faster rate than she could supply it. It ended up working out poorly in their collective favours, as Jade's untrained and woefully underprepared Aura was all but diminished in an attempt to keep her partner recovering, and Yatsuhashi was completely spent on Aura and on stamina, coupled with the adrenaline rush from his heroic moment worn away as well; walking a few metres to the Bullhead had him sweating and panting like he'd never really experienced before. "Forgive me for asking, but aren't there supposed to be four members in a Huntsman team?"

"Normally, there are; we've got a team of five. And before you ask, the other three are in the caves over there dealing with a Grimm problem."

"Right..." he said, eyeing Jade through his visor and question what she was doing here.

"Jade is a good friend of ours, and the only person on the resort who knew where the Grimm was hiding in the cave system. She and Yatsuhashi are particularly close, so she insisted on coming along." That answered his unspoken question.

"Alright. Shall we start to head back now?"

"No. They shouldn't be too long; we'll wait five minutes. If they're not back in five, then we go." Velvet reached through her Mark, sending messages as best as she could through there. She thought hard about how they were on a Bullhead now, waiting for them to come back so they could return to Beacon as a full team.

 _Safe. Eager._

There was a brief pause before her Mark started to glow under her clothing and she felt a rush of emotion.

 _Pride. Accomplishment._

With a smile, she walked over to Yatsuhashi. "How are you feeling, Yatsu?"

"In pain, but managing." Speaking for him was nearly normal now.

"I think they may have defeated it. She doesn't feel angry anymore, but rather she feels accomplished." The gentle giant smiled, looking over to Jade.

"It's over now. It won't hurt anyone else."

"Good to know," she replied, relief evident in her voice, "but it still hurt you." He simply smiled at her, joyed at how protective of him she was being. Sure, his team did the same thing, but this was on a much more personal level, and something about it made him feel that much happier.

"That Grimm hurt me only because I was protecting you; and I wouldn't change what I did for anything else on Remnant." Neon green eyes began to tear up as she looked at her partner, his smile an honest one that broke down barriers of frustration at him like they were nothing.

"You idiot. You... you Dust damned idiot." Velvet couldn't help but smile at the scene that was playing out before her. She had experienced little things like that with Coco first-hand, and had witnessed it through multiple different relationships back at Beacon; the Faunus had to admit, watching couples dealing with small quarrels and coming out the other side alright never got old to her. Their attention was drawn away from one another when a small Dust explosion went off nearby in the general direction of 'The Harvest' lake. Jade jumped on hearing the sound, but the two Huntsmen-in-Training were much more used to the sounds and as such didn't. The sound that came after was music to their ears.

"Velvs? Velvs, are you still there?"

With a grin a mile wide, the Rabbit responded with, "Yes we are Coco, yes we are. I gather that you won then?"

"That we did. We'll discuss it more in a bit, for now we just need to get to where you lot are at."

"Head over the lake and through the treeline on its far side. There's no beaten path, but there's a fairly easy way to get through the brush. The Bullhead's going to be waiting for you in the clearing on the far side."

"Great work cottontail, the three of us will see you in five!" As the comms went silent once more, Velvet's smile didn't fade as she turned to the partners beside her who, after hearing her speak, also began to smile a lot brighter.

"They did win."

* * *

Three quarters of the way back to Beacon, the six of them felt rested enough to start up conversation once again.

Yatsuhashi was the first to speak, shattering the silence they held - despite the constant drone of the Bullhead's engines. "If I may, how did you beat it?"

"Honestly, there wasn't much of a fight," Fox admitted and Neo nodded to in agreement, "it just... died so quickly."

"Sadly enough, it's true." Velvet glanced to her side and looked at her Mate in utter confusion.

"I thought when you said, 'we'll discuss it more in a bit', it was because it was a difficult battle, not the complete opposite."

"Nope, the fight was anything but exhilarating. I'll explain. We got into the caves again and searched for it, but we couldn't find it initially. So, we searched on with still no luck, and after a while we gave up hope so headed back. That's when it started calling out our names, like it did up at 'Summer Spirit'. Fox used his semblance and saw it coming down the tunnel - which was a frightening sight, I will admit - and Neo got us out of there just before it could hit us. When the Grimm caught up again, these two went in close and I just fired at it for a few seconds, and that was it." The two women who weren't present for the 'fight' looked at her perplexed; how could a Grimm like the Akkorokamui cause so much damage and destruction to people's lives yet be taken down so easily.

"That makes sense," came Yatsuhashi's response. Everyone now turned to stare at the group's tank, his words throwing all of them through a loop.

"Okay, you're going to need to expand on that one big guy, 'cause I have no idea how this makes _any_ sense."

"You just need to look at the Akkorokamui again. Not in a literal sense, but a tactical one." No one seemed to clue in on how his brain was working, so with a sigh and a slight bit of repositioning on the medi-bed he was laying on, he faced the rest of his team and began explaining in more detail. "The Akkorokamui dealt with us in ways we have never seen a Grimm deal with us before. It used hypnosis and mind alterations to get us in bad spots, convincing our minds to go to its lair without even doing anything other than making eye contact with us. It transferred Aura from one entity to another, it created replicas of people and had them fight us rather than itself, it used sneak attacks more so than direct assaults."

"Would you mind skipping straight to the point Yatsu?"

"Apologies Coco. The long and the short of it is this creature used all these tactics against us because as a being itself, it was weak. When we first tried attacking it in the caves before it unleashed the fake versions of Team HLQN, it missed the mark on many of its attacks and was mostly on the defensive rather than basically every other Grimm in existence we've fought against, which relies mostly on offense. And I think that's-"

" _It's not used to fighting!_ " Neo signed, having finally pieced together how her olive-skinned teammate was thinking.

"Exactly."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" Jade asked, the one person in the group who was not overly versed in knowledge of Grimm behaviour. "I thought all Grimm knew how to fight."

"Perhaps they do, but that doesn't mean they're all good at it. I believe this Grimm was so used to using its assets like the mind manipulation that actually battling anything became unnecessary for it to survive. When we turned up having escaped the first time and knowing how to work around its powers, it lost the advantage it had and was focussing more now on having the element of surprise. When that failed as well, it was left with nothing, and as a creature that had combat as such a low priority, it stood no chance against a group of Huntsmen and Huntresses-in-Training who had fought monsters like it before."

The dual haired leader nodded. "Okay, now that you've potentially explained it, it makes a lot more sense now."

"Yeah, should make writing the report a whole lot easier now." Caramel stared at burnt orange and black, clearly not appreciating Fox's quip.

"I am _not_ writing that damn report now Fox." The scruffy haired boy smirked at her sudden attack on him, but he knew it wasn't unwarranted or unprovoked, so he couldn't say much about it. "We still have a week or so before the mission actually ends, so I am going to use that time to the fullest." The leader stared out of the window, the sight of Beacon's highest tower catching her eyes and letting a smile grow on her face. "For now, we need to get Yatsuhashi to the Infirmary, then speak to Professor Ozpin. After that, who knows?" A few others glanced out to see what she was smiling at, Jade included, and on seeing Beacon tower approaching they felt a sense of relief at the fact they were nearly back at the Academy and the weeks behind them were just that. But for Jade, it was something else.

"This is Beacon?" she uttered, clearly in awe at the sight that was in front of her. "It's... oh, wow..."

' _Every time,_ ' Neo commented to her boyfriend, who smiled in agreement. Beacon had a habit of doing that to people.

A few minutes later, the Bullhead carrying Jade and Team CFVYN touched down on the landing pads, and as they were unloading themselves they were approached by none other than Professor Ozpin.

"This is unexpected Team CFVYN; we weren't expecting you back for another week. Did you not wish to stay there for your relaxation period?"

"We do sir, no arguments there. We came back early because, as you can see, we are in desperate need of some more advanced care for Yatsuhashi than I believe the Resort could have provided." The Headmaster glanced past the team leader to look at the young man in question, whose skin was very badly burnt and charred from some incident - he assumed the Grimm they were sent to combat - and was currently being supported by a woman with green hair and green eyes he recognised vaguely from before.

"Very well, I shall not keep you, Ms. Adel. I take it you shan't be staying long then?"

"Sorry sir, but everything we took to the Resort is still there, and we'd kind of like to have it brought back. Plus, Jade needs to go back." Ozpin looked at Jade, and on hearing that name he recalled where he had seen her before - she was the one who had snuck in to listen to his and Maron's conversation about Juliette and the Maidens back at the 'Four Season Springs'.

"And how have you been keeping recently Jade?" The direct address to her made the woman recoil slightly.

"Oh, um... I've been... good?"

"Glad to hear it." He turned his attention back to Coco. "Ms. Adel, I do certainly hope you weren't hoping to incorporate young Jade here into our Academy. You are already a team of five; I feel like a team of six would be stretching it too thin. I can do a lot with my authority at this Academy, but even that seems too much."

"No sir, that's not what-"

"Yatsuhashi and I are partners; not in the romantic nor the teamwork sense, more like non-romantic partners. When he got hurt, I wasn't going to leave his side until I knew he was going to be alright." Ozpin sipped from his ever-present mug, then hummed in acknowledgement.

"Besides that, she only had her Aura unlocked a day after we got there, and she's had no training on mastering it other than what we've taught, and she has had no weapon training in her life." Now Ozpin knew of Jaune Arc's method of getting into his school was unorthodox and wrong - he faked transcripts to get in, very effectively he might add, and lied about everything else in the face-to-face interview. As such, he knew it was possible for someone with zero training to actually grow and excel in the school from nothing. Unlike young Mr. Arc, Jade had only nine months to learn everything from the ground up, whereas he had the full Four Year experience ahead of him. He decided to keep that information secret to the students, and instead agreed to Coco's statement.

"Well, at least you know where you stand with her. I'm glad you and Mr. Daichi have found one another Ms. Celadon, but as a person not of this Academy, nor any other, I must ask that you leave as soon as possible. I will grant you permission to see Mr. Daichi to the Infirmary, but the rest of Team CFVYN _will_ escort you straight back once you're done. Understood?" The quintet of students all fired off a 'Yes sir' in unison, even though Yatsuhashi didn't even need to say anything, then the grey haired man nodded and began walking back to his tower.

"And I thought he was just creepy and foreboding when he was talking to me," Jade commented after he'd certainly left earshot, then after she'd been told to wait a few seconds longer by the Fourth Year team - supposedly he could still hear anyone talking about him from much further away than he let on.

"He can even _hear_ Sign Language."

"Okay, now you're just making that stuff up."

"I wish we were," Velvet said with a completely neutral expression. Jade looked from one team member to another, trying to determine whether or not they were lying to her for a bit of fun. Every single one of them had completely serious faces when they looked at her.

"That's so creepy..." she muttered as the truth hit her.

"And that's not the half of it." The greenette looked at Coco with surprise, who simply walked over to the other side of Yatsuhashi, lifted his weight onto her shoulder and started walking, Jade following suit with his other arm. "We'll explain more as we walk."

* * *

We're still not done with this yet, but that's the little explanation out of the way.

I thought I'd be different with the Grimm. It's kind of like **{SPOILERS FOR VOL.6}** The Apathy (AKA, 'Fuck No' Grimm Zombies) from Chapter 6, in the sense that it doesn't fight, but uses trickery to get through the people around it. Hopefully that explanation cleared it up for anyone reading who was confused.

Also, thank you to ' **TatsuAFK** ' and ' **DF-26** ' for the story favourite last Thursday that pushed me over the magic 100 mark. It's much appreciated!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	80. Grudges Held, Even This Long

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"I haven't missed this place at all," Fox mentioned as they were escorted to Yatsuhashi's room. The staff in Beacon's Infirmary wished for the students to remain outside whilst they sorted him out with the various things he'd need for his stay - heavy doses of Aura Replenisher to make up for the incredible fast rate at which he was burning through his own to try and heal himself, a few balms to calm the agitated skin and some pain relief on site as well to help with the burning sensation that was still going to be present throughout his stay - all of which they'd much rather do without five extra bodies taking up the space in the small rooms set aside for their in-patients. But now that he had been set up with everything he was going to need, the staff had called the five so that they could see him.

' _Me either,_ ' came his girlfriend's internal reply, ' _especially considering the reasons for the last time I was in here._ '

' _Hey, we'll none of that._ ' He emphasised his point by pecking her quickly on the forehead, a gesture she enjoyed as a small blush dusted her cheeks and her eyes flitted to both being pink.

"It doesn't look much different to a hospital," Jade commented.

"It's no different at all, in the grand scheme of things. The only real difference is the fact that here the staff are expecting and stocked up for dealing with lots of weapon injuries and Aura exhaustion; a general hospital would only have enough for a handful of those a month, whereas here, it can be a daily thing." Velvet's knowledge of the workings here didn't surprise Jade in the slightest, but the depth of variety this Infirmary ward in a combat academy had was mind-boggling to a woman who had never in her wildest dreams imagined that she'd step foot in a place like this. "It's why I got a pilot to come and pick us up and return us here rather than taking Yatsuhashi back to the resort - here is just far more catered to this kind of injury. Plus, we've been away for nearly a month - I want to see some of my friends again."

"They'll find us soon enough cottontail, they always do." The Faunus nodded in agreement, then twisted the handle and walked inside the room Yatsuhashi was in for his stay.

"Hello everyone," he greeted, not seeming to out of it, "how are you all?"

"We should be asking that of you Yatsu, you're the one currently in the Infirmary bed, not us."

"True." Fox made his way over to his bedside, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're glad you're alright."

"It's going to take a lot more than that to bring me down," he joked, with everyone present knowing full well that he barely survived the attack, and that the only reason he did was because the Fake-Lulu had expelled all of her energy and crumpled into nothingness before it could continue any longer.

"Did they say how long you were going to be in here for?" Coco asked, trying her best to break the downbeat feeling that came across the six of them.

"A few weeks, at best. This isn't something they can just pass off so easily, so they've asked if they can keep a close eye on my recovery, which I agreed to." Jade looked a little down after hearing that, but he reassured her. "Jade, it was always going to be a long road of recovery for me."

"I know. It's just... this is the only chance I'm really going to see you for a long while. I would have much preferred it would have been on happier terms." The bedridden man smiled, beckoning her over. She obliged, and was greeted with a large comforting arm wrapped around her. The action brought tears on almost instantaneously, her neon green eyes struggling to stay open with the tears that threatened to spill past her eyelids. "I was worried for you Yatsuhashi. So worried."

"I know you were Jade, and the risk you took by jumping off that ledge in a moment of pure adrenaline was admirable. I'm proud of you." A smile broke the stream of tears.

"Shut up."

"I'm serious; you went in there knowing that you were underprepared in comparison to the rest of us, and yet you stayed, then even when there was something that would have killed you, you still went ahead and did it. Proud doesn't begin to describe how I feel." Jade was crying again, but with a huge grin on her face. The two couples looked at them, hugging their respective partners and smiling.

Neo caught the tank's attention before asking him a question. " _Hey Yatsu, do you mind if we head back to the resort? Jade can't stay here, as you know, and we need to grab all of our stuff as well._ "

"Of course I don't mind. You still have some well-deserved rest time you can capitalise on, and I don't want you here worrying about me when you could be enjoying yourselves in a multitude of other ways." He eyed up the more experience of the couples. "Yes, even that." Fox and Neo took a couple of seconds to piece together what the giant was insinuating to the same sex coupling of the team. "Jade told me everything about your little proposition, and I agree that it may be beneficial for her every once in a while. All I ask is that you treat her with respect and not like some toy for your desires."

"We wouldn't do anything of the sort," the Faunus replied wholeheartedly.

* * *

The group stayed with their teammate for a while longer, having general discussion about whatever topics came to mind before they decided to call it a day. Members of CFVYN bid their farewells to Yatsuhashi and promised to see him as soon as they were back from the resort. Jade stayed with him for much longer, not knowing when the next time they'd come face to face again. After leaving him be, the outsider expected to be heading straight back to the landing pads and back to 'The Four Season Springs'. When she was moved on from there and ushered elsewhere, she was initially hesitant, as anyone would understandably be when being guided around a strange place.

"It won't be for long, we promise," the caramel coloured leader reassured, "it's just so we can see a couple of friends of ours that we promised to see once we'd returned." The green haired woman complied, mostly because she didn't know where she was in relation to the landing pads, but also because she trusted them not to do anything too stupid. The five of them were walking down a corridor when Velvet's ears noticeably twitched, the Faunus freezing like her animal counterpart caught in headlights.

"Velvet, what's happening?" The mage held her hand up, silencing any further questions. It was quiet as a result, and eerily so. In an instant, her right ear twitched to one side and with a gasp she lunged towards Jade and pushed her hard. All the woman could remember was being pushed, then suddenly feeling a wave of cold air rushing past her at hundreds of kilometres a minute, along with a high-pitched squeal of "They're baaaaaaccckkk!" Fox, Velvet and Coco were all tackled to the floor by a speeding Ruby Rose, who had heard of their return and went throughout the school looking for them. On seeing that they were truly back, she dashed at them all to give them a huge hug. Jade was obviously pushed out of the way, and Neo selfishly teleported herself, and only herself, out of the path of the sugar filled red blur, leaving the remaining three to share the brunt of the forceful embrace.

"I can't believe you're finally back! It seems like forever!" the reaper cried in delight.

"Red... we need... oxygen..." the gunner managed, "please move... now..." With a panicked cry, Ruby jumped off in a flurry of petals, a sight that amazed the non-student.

"Sorry! I just haven't seen you in so long that I wanted to say hi as soon as I could and hey you're new." The sudden switch in topic matter had Jade take a second or two to catch up to reality, but when she did she simply stared at the quirky silver eyed girl. "Uh... hello?"

"You... turn into petals?"

"I know, right? Isn't it cool? I mean, not as cool as some of my other friends' semblances; they can do things with magnets, or conduct electricity, or like my girlfriend Weiss - who I am so thrilled to call my girlfriend even though we've been dating for over a month but it's still so awesome - who can create glyphs, or even Neo who can teleport around like... wait, I still haven't had an apology!" Silver eyes turned dark and hard as their owner stared at the tri coloured woman in question, the bubbly personality that was there moments prior gone in an instant. "You dislocated my arm!"

"You did what?"

"She dislocated my arm. We were fighting, and she just knocks it out of its socket. I want an explanation and an apology." The cloaked girl crossed her arms, trying to be as annoyed and intimidating as she could possibly manage. Sadly, to Neo, who was far more versed in the art of short person intimidation, it came merely as a cute little pout. She smirked, then started signing.

" _The perfect way to make your own strawberry ice cream is to combine 250ml of single cream, 2 tbsp. of caster sugar, a tsp. of vanilla extract and four tbsp. of crushed strawberries in a litre size re-sealable plastic bag. Press the air out of the bag, seal and shake bag to combine contents. Place the bag-_ "

"Stop, Neo stop! I can't understand you."

' _Good,_ ' the mute thought, as everyone else present who could understand Sign Language were finding it very hard not to burst out laughing at the complete non-apology the ex-criminal had offered, all whilst the offender looked on at the girl ten years her junior with an innocent look.

"Fox, can you translate for me please?"

"Sure," he said out loud. ' _You are cruel sometimes,_ ' he continued internally.

' _Only when I want to be. Plus, that was too good of an opportunity to pass up._ '

' _Uh huh._ ' After a brief period of external silence, Fox spoke to Ruby again. "Neo says that she truly is sorry for what she did, and for the fact she didn't get a chance to say this sooner. All that time, she was completely aware of what she was doing. She had to play along to keep the woman in control of her from shocking her to death, but she never intended anyone to get hurt like you did. She saw your arm was hurting, but chalked that down to exhaustion, not a previously pulled muscle. She hopes you can put that mishap behind you and forgive her for what she had to do." The crimson tipped girl looked from Fox to his girlfriend, who seemed genuinely saddened by what she had to do back then. This wasn't an apology on face value for the sake of an apology, it was genuine - even if it was coming through a third party.

The angry pout maintained for a couple more seconds before it eventually caved in. "Oh alright, I forgive you." Neo smiled, opening her arms for Ruby to give her a hug, but a large white Schnee crest materialised between the speedster and the illusionist.

"Oh no, I am not trusting you _anywhere_ near my girlfriend again. Not after last time." The voice came from down the hallway, accompanied by a flowing white off-centre ponytail and equally dazzling clothing. Next to the young woman, who was approaching with her left arm extended to summon the glyph, was a taller woman with dark hair, a bow atop her head and a vicious scowl, and on the other side of her was another woman with burning red eyes and golden hair that appeared to be aflame.

"Is that who I-"

"Jade Celadon," Coco began, grabbing the green themed girl around her shoulders and pointing to each of the girls as they marched forward, "allow me to introduce you to Blake Belladonna, Yang Xiao Long and Weiss Schnee - yes, _that_ Schnee - the respective teammate, half-sister and girlfriend of young Ruby Rose here, team leader of Beacon's most prestigious team; RWBY." Neo waved, but Blake dashed forward and pushed her away from Ruby as Yang and Weiss ran to fill the space between their leader and the ice cream girl.

"You've got some nerve, trying to act all jovial Neo." Yang's eyes burnt with a fierce crimson light as she stared at the shorter woman, continuing. "You dislocate my sisters' arm, disappear with the team for a month, then come back and try to pretend everything's all hunky-dory? What do you think we are, idiots?"

"Yang, you've got it wrong, Neo-"

"Ruby, we're your teammates. We are not going to stand there and watch whilst this woman, who hurt you so badly that she put you in the Infirmary, tries to play the whole thing off like it was a schoolyard quarrel." Blake's determined look frightened Jade back a step, though the slight glow on her shoulder caught her attention. Looking over at the other girl, Yang, she saw a similar shine there too.

' _So, these two are Mates as well,_ ' she thought to herself. _'Makes sense now..._ '

"Blake, just listen. Neo said she was sorry, and that-"

"Oh, so a simple apology makes everything better? What happens just magically goes away because she admitted she was in the wrong?"

"Just shut up and listen, okay?" the youngest cried, almost in a shout. "Neo admits that she knew what she was doing all that time she was fighting us-"

"You're not helping the little bitch's case, Rubes," the brawler growled under her breath as her Faunus partner glared at Neo.

"-but she did it to survive. There was someone controlling her that would have killed her if they knew she was disobeying them. Or worse, they could have controlled her completely, then we may not have stood a single chance at all."

Ruby's girlfriend folded her arms in annoyance. "You're not exactly painting us all in a good light Ruby."

"Because I am being truthful! If Professor Ozpin was worried about us combatting Neo to the point he needed three separate teams to fight her, then we stood no chance - and that was with her most likely holding back." Neo did have to admit it, she had trained many times over her years of crime to fight increasingly larger and more ruthless groups of people as a way of preparing herself for potential situations like this. It also meant that, when facing down against a smaller number of enemies, she had more control over the battle as she was so used to listening out for multiple people's footfalls and breaths that focussing on one person became almost as easy and natural as breathing. And when she fought the teams at the start of the year, she wasn't going all out, but she was giving them and her restrained self a run for their collective Lien. "What I'm saying is that I accepted her apology already, and I want you to as well."

All at once, everything in the Infirmary corridor got a whole lot colder. This was due to, in part, Weiss' icy stare directed straight at Neo in an attempt to bore into her soul and purge the evil from it. Also contributing to the fact was Yang's temper easing off slightly, her hair calming down to less of a dancing flame, more of an aggressive golden glow and her eyes bleeding back to their regular lilac hue. Whilst it wasn't as easily noticeable unless you had seen it a few times - of which CFVY had not - on closer inspection you saw that the few deep violet flickers of flame that sparked off almost invisibly from Blake's hair also died off as well; a trait that passed on with the couple's Mating. WBY stared at Neo, whilst no eye contact was returned initially. Having three pairs of eyes trying to drill holes in your skull with just a glance was rather off putting, especially when the glare came from people you were acquainted with, but not exactly friendly with.

Yang was the one to close the gap, bringing herself to within striking distance of the mute. "I accept that Ruby has forgiven you; I, and I'm sure the other two, have not. It's not some sort of switch you can flick; your trust needs to be earned back. Forgive us if we're being 'too harsh', but you hurt someone close to the three of us and we are not the type of girls to take this sort of thing lying down. We will see you around Neo."

The ice cream girl sighed; she had been doing so well to get on the good side of the brawler ever since she started attending here, but that one incident brought everything bad that happened between them back to the forefront. Yang turned to the rest of CFVYN that was present. "We're glad to have you back guys." There didn't feel like there was any sincerity behind the remark, and all the Fourth Year students present felt that. Even Jade felt it, and she barely knew the girl. Maybe, under better circumstances, the reception from the three 19 year olds would have been warmer, but not this time, and not now. The blonde paid no attention to Jade whatsoever as she made her way back to her girlfriend and white coloured teammate, the trio shooting Neo one final look of disapproval before rounding the corner and walking away from them. Ruby also looked at Neo's downcast expression, her silver eyes full of regret at her team's actions whilst Neo's eyes were a sorrowful brown.

"I'm sorry Neo. I just... they'll come 'round eventually. It may take some extreme measures, but I believe you can all sort it out." Neo didn't look up, didn't even acknowledge Ruby's comments, she just stared down at the tiled floor of the corridor. Unsure of what to do, Ruby glanced at Fox, the older couple, and the green haired woman standing by the illusionist, but none of them seemed to know what to do either. Fresh out of ideas on how to deal with this, the young reaper simply uttered a last apology before jogging to catch up with her team. Fox closed the gap between him and his girlfriend, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her into a gentle embrace.

"You gonna be alright hun?"

' _Can we leave this place now?_ ' she almost pleaded, tears in her eyes as she spoke to him telepathically, ' _I don't feel welcome here right now, and I want to go and speak to a team that actually **wants** to see me._ ' He didn't say anything in response, internally or otherwise, simply choosing a nod and to start walking forward. The other girls around them joined.

* * *

 **SURPRISE CHRISTMAS UPDATE!**

Merry Christmas y'all! Hope you enjoy the day and the days following. I wanted to surprise you with a Christmas Day update that will be _on top of_ ' **Senseless'** ' regular Thursday update. Two in one week, I must be spoiling you.

T'is the season of giving, and clearly _WBY aren't giving a fuck about Neo. Sorry the chapter's a downer, I didn't plan this downer of a chapter to come out on Christmas Morn. Still, that plot thread has been explained a little more now.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	81. She Will Get the Joke

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Neo did cheer up after a while, all with a little help from her friends. They did nothing spectacularly over the top, they simply let her be sad for a little while before coaxing her into general conversation again, making her laugh at bad jokes and embarrassing moments an others' expenses. Ruby even managed to contribute to her cheer. Whilst the quintet of twenty-something year olds were strolling around Beacon to cheer Neo up, they all felt a strong rush of wind hitting them from behind, then another one a second after hitting them from the side. As the ruby red petals flew away from everyone's vision, Neo felt a small package in her hands. Upon further inspection, there was a small gift and a little note from the hooded girl.

" _I hope this makes you feel better. I know they help me. Ruby :)_ "

The package was simple; a small blue bag with the gifts inside. There was no wrapping paper on the gift itself for the pure reason that it would have been incredibly time consuming, and next to pointless, to wrap two large chocolate chip cookies only for them to be unwrapped and eaten within the next thirty minutes. The little act of generosity from the tri coloured woman's junior brought that fierce smile Neo was known for back into the limelight. They also quelled a small part of hunger that the team never knew was growing until their stomachs grumbled in a symphony of undernourishment - a fault the team could only blame on themselves. So, heeding their bodies' call, the five of them made yet another detour towards the dining hall, fortunately just as the rush was dying down from the lunch break.

"I'm just saying Coco, shouldn't we be heading back to the airship now? I've seen Beacon now and I am very impressed, but I'm a little bit worried that Professor Ozpin, or any other members of staff, will see me here and take me off site. I'd rather leave before that." The team leader let out a slight chuckle to herself before turning her head towards Jade, never once breaking step.

"Jade, there's only one member of faculty you really need to be mindful of about those sorts of things," she initially dismissed the greenette's scepticism before continuing on, "and her name is Glynda Goodwitch. Hopefully we'll hear her before we can see her - she always wears these heeled boots that are very distinguishable when she's walking on tiled surfaces - but if not, we'll let Neo try and speak reason with her."

" _Why me?_ "

"Don't play dumb, Shortcake. You and Goodwitch are two peas in a pod, so you'll have the best possible success rate if and when we need to talk to her."

"I still don't get it though," Jade admitted, "why is she so scary?" Neo tried to answer with a signed "she's not really", but Velvet this time jumped in before the illusionist had a chance to get a word in edgeways.

"Okay, imagine someone with Neo's personality. Now refine it for an extra twenty years, and add a dash of teaching in there." The neon green eyed woman nodded as Velvet continued, the mute of the group just standing there and letting it all happen. The Faunus was technically not wrong, plus she didn't really mind being compared to someone as intimidating as Goodwitch. "Now stretch Neo until she's about 6' 3", inflate her chest to Ds, maybe even DDs, give her telekinetic powers, blonde hair and make her into a Matured Dominatrix, complete with by-the-books look, glasses, and a stern attitude. She even carries around a riding crop everywhere." Jade's eyes widened at the revelation and all the team could do to confirm that this wasn't a trick was to nod. " _That_ is Professor Goodwitch."

"Okay, I can see why she's scary now - remind me never to get on her bad side."

Coco grabbed her shoulder to reassure the outsider. "Relax Jade, you're most likely not going to be here to experience first-hand the wrath of Glynda Goodwitch, so you've got nothing to worry about. But _if_ something happens, we'll just say you're a student from Vacuo over for the Vytal Festival who didn't know better." The comment didn't exactly fill the greenette with confidence.

' _She knows Vytal 41 isn't at Beacon, right?_ ' Neo queried.

' _I'm pretty sure she knows, yeah._ '

' _Does **Jade** know where Vytal 41 is?_ '

' _No idea, but Coco dug that hole, so let her crawl out of it._ '

The five of them grabbed food from the cafeteria and sat far away from everyone else to have a simple discussion to themselves without the constant hounding of First Years. Today was pasta day, which Velvet was thankful for, for Jade's sake if no one else's - the pasta was arguably the best dish they served here, even though all the dishes were meant to be good for growing Huntsmen-in-Training, as it was the one with the most edible content. After their hungers had been satisfied, Neo led the rest of the group to their final destination before the landing pads. Velvet and Coco wanted to shoot back to their own dorm to grab a few extra things before return to 'The Four Season Springs', something that Neo allowed them to do under express orders not to make out with one another at all whilst they were grabbing their things. The corners of their mouth twitched up unnoticeably as they promised no making out, then they ran once Neo was convinced they meant it, leaving Jade and the ever so slightly more conventional pairing of Team CFVYN left.

Neo typed out a few things she wanted Jade to say on her Scroll, then handed the device to her before they reached the door they needed to.

"I am compelled to ask why," she asked, having skim read through what was given to her, "these seem a little... odd."

"...Neo says that they're our friends, they'll get the jokes. Plus, she needs a good laugh right now." With a sigh, Jade held the Scroll at a decent eye level and knocked on the door.

"Yes?" came the muffled voice through the wood.

"'Hello, my name is Jade Celadon, is this Team Harlequin's dorm?'"

"It is, yes."

"'And you are?'"

"Surely you should know if you're knocking here."

"'I can't hear you properly through the door.'"

The voice groaned before answering, that action alone telling the older students who it was before the words ever could. "My name doesn't matter. Now what do you want? I've got work in here that I'd much rather be getting on with, and that's saying something." Neo pointed with glee at what she wanted Jade to say next; the woman had said everything word perfect thus far, and this was the punchline to the joke.

"Are you _sure_ they'll be alright with this?" Jade asked in a whisper, to which Neo simply nodded sincerely. "Okay... 'I'm here to see Lu-P. I was hoping you could help.'" There was a silence, and Fox brought Jade back behind him. Moments later, the door burst open with Lulu standing there with her Chakram aimed directly at eye level, her face awash with frustration most likely brought on through a hard day's worth of work.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are, but if you think you can... oh, you motherfuckers..." Lulu was greeted with the two pranksters grinning at her, with a third unknown person standing rather sheepishly behind them. "...Well don't just stand there, your hugs are greatly needed right now." Not needing to be told twice, the couple dashed forward and hugged Lulu back into the room. "It's great to see you two again!"

"Likewise, Lulu, likewise." The Persimmon's face lit up in her older friends' embrace, but when her eyes opened, and she spotted Jade standing there she jumped a bit, not expecting a third person to be with them despite the fact she both heard her and saw her earlier. In her own defence, she was preoccupied with saying hello to the couple that brought Team HLQN out of its shell.

"Sorry, I forgot you were there for a second. I presume these two made you do that?" Unsure what to do, Jade nodded sheepishly. "Come on, I'm not going to bite your head off. I'm just a little bi-" Lulu looked to her side and saw both Fox and Neo staring at her, clearly not believing a word, "okay, I'm extremely annoyed at my workload at the moment, but that doesn't mean I can't be pleasant. Jade, wasn't it?"

"Yeah..." the greenette mumbled, still not 100% convinced she wasn't going to be attacked at the first opportunity.

"I'm Lulu Persimmon, nice to meet you. So, what's brought you to Beacon? No offence, but you don't seem like the type of girl to attend."

"Well, I'm... not really here learning to become a Huntress at all - my parents were against the idea because they had an inclination as to my potential semblance, and having had it unlocked in the last few weeks they were right."

"Whatever suits you. What is your semblance then?"

"Her emotions are slightly amplified, and they project onto those nearby," Fox answered. It was clear she was having a slightly difficult time putting the effect she had on others into words, so he did it for her. "It's more of a passive semblance than an active one, but you can tell when it's active because her eyes properly glow." Jade's face heated up, turning red from the embarrassment of having this stranger suddenly take a long hard look at her eyes.

"You never explained why you were here either," Lulu responded, taking a seat on her own bed and gesturing for the others to do the same.

"Yatsuhashi needed to be rushed back due to injuries whilst they were fighting the Grimm at 'Summer Spirit', so-"

"Wait, the big guy? What could have done that to him of all people?"

"Trust us, that's a whole other story to tell," the burnt orange themed boy explained.

"Anyway, we came back here to get him better medical attention, and yeah." The grey and orange girl uttered a silent "Oh" before shifting all her attention to her Scroll, swiping at the screen and getting her teammates on dial.

* _Yo Lu-P, what's up?_ * The three older people in the room could see Lulu's expression spin on a dime when her teammate, most likely Viola, called her that. Neo was pretty sure she heard Nylan giggling and Quentin reprimanding her too.

"It's been over a year now, I told you to stop it with the 'Lu-P' joke."

* _Oh shush, you love it really._ *

"Yeah, about as much as I love women."

* _Wow Lulu,_ * this was Nylan now * _I didn't know you swung that way at all, I thought you only liked dudes!_ * This retort got a much heartier laugh from Viola, even a giggle from Quentin. Lulu also noted that the three in the room were doing their upmost to remain impartial to the banter between the team.

"Fuck you and shut up, I-"

* _Well, which do you want me to do?_ *

"Nylan, I'm trying to have a decent conversation here. Team CFVYN are back."

That got their attention. * _Really?! Where are they, we need to see them._ *

"We're currently sleeping in your bed, Vi," Fox shot back, drawing the fire away from the girl making the call, "and I have got to say, it feels kind of... broken. Like the springs have all been worn out through strenuous activities."

* _Is that Fox?_ *

"It is indeed. We're in your dorm room, come back as soon as. Neo and I have some stories to tell."

* * *

The door slammed open, scaring most of the occupants of the room.

"Where are they?!" Nylan dramatically demanded, her girlfriend and other teammate standing behind her.

"Currently recovering from their near heart attacks, you idiot." She gestured to the three sitting beside her, all of them clutching their chests to calm themselves down. "I am not paying for a replacement door if you break this one too."

"Hey Nylan. Glad to see you haven't cha- oof!" The Cheetah flew straight at the copper haired boy, tackling him straight back onto the bed. Neo started waving her arms around with a grin on her face, everyone present knowing it was Sign Language, but only Fox truly knowing what she said even though he was stuck underneath an 18 year old Faunus.

"Fox, what'd she say?"

"Oh, that? Just a simple 'If anyone else starts tackle hugging my boyfriend, I am going to pull their insides out and start dancing with their fallopian tubes.' Why?" Everyone else paled in an instant, as if someone had flicked a switch. Even Quentin, although his pallor came from the prospect of the threat rather than the threat itself. Nylan jumped off Fox, standing there unsure of what to do, or what to say, or if she should even say anything at all. Should she apologise to him for doing th- "She also just said that you are all really gullible for believing that." Viola glanced at her, seeing her grinning with such a huge shit eating grin for such a small person, and decided to act. The patterned girl tackled Neo instead, catching her in an embrace that she could not escape. Well, she _could_ escape it, but chose not to.

Quentin smiled, watching everyone else be happy at their little reunion. "It seems so much longer that a month, I swear." Everyone did eventually calm down and settle on one of the beds in the room. "How did it all go?"

"I'd say 'it went swimmingly', but I'd be lying; a lot happened in the time we were there, but the main thing is we beat the Grimm and it is no longer terrorising that spring up there." They all were ecstatic to hear that news, especially considering all the grief and discomfort the creature put them through.

"I knew you could do it!" Viola congratulated.

"Thanks Vi. But like I said, it didn't go swimmingly. That's actually the reason we're back here now rather than still at the resort having some well needed R&R." The shift in tone caught everyone's attention and HLQN were now focussed solely on Fox, as he was the only one there not from the full team who knew them beforehand and could communicate what happened. Jade simply sat in peace off to one side, close enough to Fox and Neo to not feel completely isolated, but the feeling of alienation in a group who knew each other so well was incredibly apparent. "I'll start with the positives; the main chunk of the mission went really well. It was a large scale extermination deal with a lot of individual nests we had to clear out. We even got to use one trick that you'll be taught next year, although I think we can all agree that it was a bit too destructive to be much good for multiple uses."

"What is it?" Lulu inquired, hoping to get a leg up and be able to use it in advance. Neo simply shook her head at her, irking the persimmon coloured young woman.

"Neo's got the right idea Lulu, it's not something to be messed with. If it weren't for a certain girlfriend of mine's ability to teleport, we both would have been gravely injured or outright killed by it." The Second Year rightly backed down from the question, seeing that if even they could have died, there wasn't a chance their team could do it without things ending in disaster. "But I digress. We cleared all the nests out, and so our last port of call was dealing with the Grimm up at 'Summer Spirit'. That thing very nearly took us out as well, if it wasn't for some very lucky timing. We were surrounded by this black mist at one point, and so Neo decided she wanted to get a picture of it, just so that we could compile a document on everything about this Grimm. But it was actually hidden in the mist, and everyone except me, Yatsuhashi and Jade saw it." Fox gestured to the woman in question on mentioning her name, and the team - barring Lulu - greeted her before turning back to Fox. "Yatsu and Jade were away from the group due to an injury he sustained early that morning, and Jade was looking after him, so it was just us two, Velvet and Coco, who I'm sure you've all met before, right?"

"Fox, we helped you when Neo went rogue, of course we met them." The ice cream girl's expression dropped past neutral on being reminded of that, but it didn't stay that way for long. And despite her attempt to hide it, Fox still caught the tail end of it and made a mental note to speak with her about it again.

"Right, so you were. Sorry, my mind's all over the place right now. Anyway, they saw it and we ran into the alcove that was up there. They couldn't tell you this next bit even if they wanted to, but the creature had near instantly brainwashed them into thinking various things. Coco was being forced to lead us all down into its lair inside the mountain, Neo was just angry at anything that she didn't agree with and Velvet was fearful of everything. Basically, it had forced them to do its work for it. But I learnt of this and snapped them out of it, discovering water - specifically running water - was a great way of breaking its hold on them. Once we were all patched up, physically and mentally, and with some sunglasses courtesy of Coco to protect our eyes from looking at it, we went back in to fight it properly. As it turns out, it's not the best fighter in the world and as a Grimm is honestly disappointingly weak. But it makes up for that by having the weirdest power I've ever seen. It made clones of you to fight us with."

"What?!" Team HLQN cried in unison.

"It's true," Jade mentioned almost regretting speaking out the second she said anything, "although I didn't know it was you back then, looking at you four now I see exactly the resemblance. It did a good job at replicating physically, and I imagine their fighting styles were also mimicked well. I've never seen you fight, so I can't compare."

"How the hell can it do that?" their team leader asked, still in utter disbelief.

"We couldn't tell you exactly, but going off what we all discovered, it takes energy from people it captures and transfers their Aura into another thing storing the copy people. My friend got caught and I went in to rescue her. The only reason they knew that was what it did with people was because I had seen it then."

"Jade had been a huge help to us these past weeks. She's provided us with information that's been really valuable to defeating this thing, and she's even captured dear Yatsuhashi's heart." Fox played that last titbit of information up a lot, causing the greenette to blush profusely.

"That's not funny Fox!" she protested, crossing her arms in annoyance as the Second Years giggled.

' _It is a little,_ ' Neo responded internally, answering to everyone else by nodding and holding her thumb and forefinger ever so slightly apart.

"In all seriousness, we couldn't have done this without her. Now, when the copy creatures attacked, they really did fight just like you do, except it was in hand-to-hand combat; there were no weapons fired and there was no teamwork amongst them at all. Everything they did was very 'lone wolf', but that made them easier to pick off. Sadly, there was one exception to the 'no weapons fired' rule, and that was you Lulu." The group all turned to the Persimmon, who looked terrified at the thought of her - well, the 'Fake, Grimm Copy' Her - hurting someone from her group of friends. "It still figured out how to use your energy attacks, and it used them on Jade here." The grey and orange woman gasped, turning back to Jade with tears in her eyes. "She wouldn't have survived, if it wasn't for Yatsuhashi jumping in the way and tanking a four second energy beam."

"F-four seconds...?" she stuttered in shock. The mute nodded. "How... how bad is he?"

"Lulu, don't-"

"How bad is he Fox!" she snapped back, still in shock, and that was clearly manifesting in aggressive moments like that.

"He's doing alright. We brought him back here to get some proper medical attention from people who know how to deal with this sort of thing, and he will be making a full recovery. His skin was pretty bad initially, but it's nothing Aura won't heal." Lulu nodded slowly, not willing to look up from her lap, he fists clenching her school skirt in a vice like grip.

"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" she asked again.

"Yeah, he'll be okay. He's a big guy Lulu, he can cope." Whilst a few titters could be heard from the rest of the group, the Persimmon wasn't one of them. Her eyes finally drifted up.

"I want to go see him, if that's alright with you."

Fox couldn't help but chuckle. "Lulu, you don't need to have our permission to go and see him. I'm sure he'll appreciate it, actually. He knows that it wasn't you who did that to him, and even then, he is a very forgiving man." She nodded once again, hearing his words and accepting them, but not showing it.

"That sounds like quick a month you've had already," Nylan mentioned, breaking everyone out of their downcast moods, "what's next on the books?"

"Well," came Fox's reply, happy at the break given to them all, "we're heading back to the resort for another week. As part of the mission brief, we were given a week's worth of R&R at the resort if we could complete it within three weeks, else we'd have to eat into that time finishing the mission. Yatsuhashi is fine with it, but I think if you pay him a visit or two over the course of the week, he'll appreciate it. Afterwards, we're going to be doing some smaller missions to build up a kitty for ourselves as a group before graduation. Otherwise, not much."

Their conversation drifted on, swapping to what the Second Year Team did in their time between then and now, until Neo and Fox had to call it quits and head off.

"It was great catching up with you all again, and we'll see you in a week."

"Bye guys. It was nice meeting you too Jade."

"Same." The burnt copper, pear green and dual pink and brown haired people finally made their way back to the landing pads, having spent the vast remainder of day at the school as opposed to a quick there and back between the Infirmary and the Bullheads. Neo sent a message to Coco and Velvet, telling them that they were near the landing pads a few minutes ago, but they hadn't replied. That worried the woman, but not greatly - it's not like they could have gone far. "I enjoyed it here," the greenette commented as they walked along the home stretch towards their ride back to the resort, "I know it may not have looked like I did, but it was so intriguing to see how your day to day lives work, and how different they are from ours."

" _Similar_ " Neo signed, one of the few words Jade had been taught in the time they had together at 'The Four Season'.

"That is true, but there's still so much difference as well. Especially for a person like me."

"So, changed your mind then? Want to join the prestigious ranks of the Hunters and Huntresses of Remnant?"

"Ask me that question seven years ago knowing what I know now, and I _might_ have said yes. But I'm too old for this life, and I'm too much of a liability with my semblance. Who'd want to be on a team with someone who can flip their own mood on a dime, and by proxy everyone else's around them?"

"I don't agree with what you're saying at all, but I understand what you mean and where you're coming from. But Neo was older than you are when she started, so age isn't really a factor."

' _I had also been training as if I was a Huntress from the age of seventeen, and only got in here through very, **very** unique circumstances,_ ' the mute reminded him.

' _Those are minor details I may have missed out,_ ' he replied.

' _They sound pretty major to me._ '

"I appreciate your concern, but I don't think the life is for me anyway."

"It's not for everyone. I was only teasing you, I know you'd mentioned it before." The green themed woman simply grinned in response as they arrived on the landing pads.

"Where to, you three?" the pilot asked, leaning against the side of his aircraft.

"We need to wait a few more minutes for our teammates, but once they're here, it's to 'The Four Season Springs' Resort, South-East Vale."

"Sure thing kid. Just say when they're here."

Velvet eventually arrived with Coco in tow some fifteen minutes after the first lot had gotten there, looking a bit dishevelled, for lack of a better description, and carrying a small bag with them, filled with Oum only knows what. The pilot was a little displeased because he'd missed a couple of opportunities for flights out, but he had nothing on the looks Jade, Fox and especially Neo had.

"Sorry we're late," Velvet puffed, out of breath from running here, "we got caught up."

" _'Caught up', is that what you two are calling it now? Because to me it looks like you two had some pretty steamy 'catching up' to do._ " Neo looked more and more annoyed at the pair of them as time passed. " _And I thought I said no making out._ "

"To be fair, we didn't make out at all," Coco pointed out. "All sex, no kissing whatsoever."

" **Coco!** " Whilst the fashionista sounded proud about her statement, the Faunus inversely sounded absolutely mortified. The interaction didn't go unnoticed, and ultimately, they couldn't stay mad, so Jade, Fox and Neo just ended up laughing at them, with the recently sexed-out couple laughing too.

* * *

Hey... guys.

H-how are... you today?

This... lovely... Friday... morning.

Okay, I completely forgot to get this chapter published on time as I promised - post Christmas, pre New Year is a weird Bermuda Triangle of days where one bleeds into the other, so I kind of forgot. But it's here now, right?

I will get next chapter out on Thursday.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	82. Worrying even a Maiden

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The five of them arrived back at 'The Four Season Springs' as the sun set over the resort, leaving only the highest points of the building illuminated by the now orange light of the late day. Jade made her excuse and parted from the near-complete team to head back to her own room in one of the other buildings, but instead made a detour to another's abode. Her knuckles wrapped on the door, and within the minute a familiar pair of tangerine orange eyes.

"Oh, thank the Gods you're alright." Jade got rushed by Juliette the second she opened the door, the cornsilk blonde worrying for her friend's safety. "I hadn't heard from you for the past couple of days and I was scared you'd been hurt."

"Juliette, I'm fine," the green haired woman insisted, peeling herself away from her friend, "honestly. I came here to give you some good news for a change." The Maiden smiled at the prospect, inviting her friend in.

"So? What's the good news that got you coming here then?"

"Well, the guys I've been hanging a-AAHH!" Both young women cried out in fear at the sight, one that neither of them were expecting at all considering how the room they were in was designed to almost bend light around it and render it invisible to anyone who gazed upon it from the outside. Sat on the bed, legs daintily crossed, open parasol slung over her shoulder, was none other than Neo, her eyes switching from brown in her right eye pink in her left to the colours matching up with her hair for but a brief moment before swapping back, all while a grin grew on her face. "Neo, what the hell?!"

"Aren't you the one that can change eye colours?" the blonde asked. Jade simply hit her arm in response.

"She somehow found your room in the resort and snuck in, appearing on your bed through some means, and the first thing you ask about is 'you can change your eye colour'? Aren't you more concerned about the fact she's here right now?"

"I mean... how did you get here?" Juliette tried to play along, but neither Jade nor Neo were convinced. Neo especially, she just rolled her eyes and threw her Scroll at the pair, her message obviously pre-typed as neither of them saw her write it up.

 **'I'm here to get some answers. You've been hiding things from us Juliette, and I want to know them. Who are you, really?'**

"I'm not going to tell you anything," the tangerine eyed girl growled, her eyes shining with a new light and her hair shimmering. Neo's curiosity was most certainly piqued by this sudden display, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward with interest, but Jade stepped between the pair.

"Juliette, that's enough. Neo's deceptively strong, you wouldn't be able to take her on."

"I'm not being intimidated by a girl with an umbrella." That comment caused the eyes of Neo to switch to the same as her hair once again, this time remaining so as she stood from the bed and bowed as if ready to fight. "Listen Neo, I've got power in me unlike you've ever seen before, I can end you in an instant if I so wanted to. I suggest you leave now before I have to do that." The mute's smirk hardened, the thinly veiled threat not budging her at all and in fact solidifying her resolve to stay. Juliette also redoubled her efforts, bringing her Maiden's powers forth a little harder, causing sparks to fly from strand to strand on her head. Jade's intervention prevented neither of them from backing down, so she decided it came to drastic measures. Jade ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, then came back out brandishing it.

"Get away from each other, now!" she called out, unafraid of either of them now. The threat of her with a weapon did nothing, and the Maiden casually waved it off.

"Jade, don't get involved. I've got someone willingly coming to me wanting a fight, I'll give it to them."

"Back off now, or I drive this through my own heart."

 _That_ threat did something. Both Neo and Juliette turned to Jade to see her raising the blade up, swapping clumsily to a reverse grip to plunge it into herself. Juliette turned the Maiden's powers off right away, and Neo teleported the distance, grabbing the knife wielding arm by the wrist to stop the greenette from killing herself.

"What do you think you're playing at?!" the blonde chastised, "you could have killed yourself."

"And you could have just answered her questions. Instead, I had to do something drastic for you two to even recognise my presence here and stop you from exposing yourself. What would you have done if this fight travelled? You're suddenly battling in front of everyone in the resort and the secret is exposed to the entirety of Remnant?"

The blonde, whilst hanging her head in shame, still bit back at her friend for the upfront nature of her comment. "I get it Jade, and I'm sorry. But threatening to kill yourself? Low blow." She turned to Neo, who had managed to wrestle the knife off Jade and was now standing there with it in her hand. "I'm sorry to you as well Neo. Can we just talk sit down and properly this time? I promise, I'll answer what I can if we just do this right." Heterochromia looked gleefully towards her as she smiled and clasped her hands together, all whilst still holding onto the knife, and gestured for the pair of them to take a seat. She proceeded to walk back to the kitchenette in Juliette's room and put the knife back where it should be.

"Sorry about her," a downbeat Jade began, "she tends to be very upfront with things when she really wants something. It takes a little getting used to, and I'll admit, I'm still not there yet."

"You coped better than I did," the cornsilk haired young woman reminded her, earning a smile from her neon green eyed friend. She wasn't going to add the 'initially, at least' that was floating around her head - it would have done neither of them any good. Perhaps at a later date.

When Neo returned, she sat down next to Juliette, almost uncomfortably so, and presented her with her Scroll.

 **'I'll ask you again: Who are you?'**

"I'll tell you, but you must promise that under no circumstances are you to let any of this known to anyone else." Neo held her left hand up and drew a cross over her heart with her right, promising her that much. "Alright then; my name is Juliette Solstice. I'm twenty three, and as of thirteen months ago, I became the latest of the Summer Maidens after the previous one passed away.

"The story of the Four Maidens and the Wizard is true, how an old man gifted four sisters the ability to bring life and balance to human and Faunus kind, and I am now living proof of that story. When the woman in possession of this power before dies, the one who was in their thoughts last gets transferred the power. Your Professor Ozpin brought me in with Maron, the Head Receptionist here, when I'd shown some interest in the previous owner, asking if she was alright when she appeared unwell, visiting her from time to time when I was allowed, that sort of thing. He said I had 'a strong will and a good heart', so he deemed me worthy and when I said yes I became... this."

On that, she flicked her hand open summoning forth a small ball of concentrated lightning hovering just above her palm. Jade was as intrigued as she was the first time, but Neo's fascination was completely new. The ball of energy hummed, sending out an errand spark every once or twice before she closed her palm and let the ball dissipate into herself once more. "I've been able to do that basically ever since I got these powers, and what I showed you when we were... facing off against each other was also very low end stuff. I guess the Summer Maiden favoured electricity; it seems to be my default thing. Jade found out about a year ago through snooping-"

"I said was sorry, what more do you want from me?"

"Nothing; you've given me a friend to talk to and confide to in the time I've been here, I'm not going to complain at all. But yeah, Jade's been there as a friend for the past year, basically keeping me sane whilst I remain essentially cooped up in here 365 days of the year." Neo typed out an answer as fast as she could manage.

 **'Why don't you just go? Who can stop you?'**

"Other than my sisters, there should genuinely be no one who could." Neo made some wild gesture outwards, and the two others (correctly) interpreted it to mean 'well why don't you go then?', but all that got at first was a sigh from Juliette. "I'd be at risk 24/7, that's why. I know I am here, but nobody knows I'm here. Out there, I'm exposed and at risk. That's what the resort is to me, it's essentially my home now. It's not like I have a family to go back to now anyway..." Neo sensed something tragic had happened in the past, but for her sake aptly chose to avoid any further questions on that matter and instead directly asked something else.

 **'What made you want it? I know Ozpin said he deemed you worthy, but that doesn't mean you had to say yes, did it?'**

"You're right, and the answer is pathetically stupid; I was curious. I wanted to know what it would be like to possess the powers that men, women and children dream of, so I said yes. I answered with my head, when in my heart I was telling myself that there were consequences to my actions. My parents didn't care for me much anymore-"

' _Oh, I thought they were dead based on how she phrased herself earlier,_ ' Neo thought to herself as the yellow haired Maiden continued.

"-and all the friends that I had didn't even bother contacting me. I was supposed to dispose of my old Scroll so they could get me a new, off the grid one for contacting them in dire situations only, but I managed to sneak my old one away before it was disposed of. I kept it for 36 days, and not a single person contacted me to ask where I was or if anything had happened to me. I reckon I was all but dead to them, and so here was the perfect place for me. I had Jade as a surrogate sister now, and Maron as a new Mom, and the occasional visitor spoke to 'Juno' or 'Mrs. S' every now and again, but I never felt free. Even now, the feeling that I'm trapped is still there, but I'm learning to cope with it, to live a life like this. To-" Juliette didn't get a chance to finish her sentence as Neo closed the already small gap between them and practically threw herself onto the Maiden's lap for a hug. Juliette looked confused, but Jade shrugged and mouthed the words "Just go with it" to her, so the blonde did just that.

 **'No one deserves to live in complete solitude if they didn't willingly choose it. I have lived that life. I was trapped inside my house for nearly nine years of my life because of a disease I have called Differing Aura Glow Syndrome, and in that time, I learnt so much about myself, but I didn't know what real friendship was. I had my older brother, my two parents and the most important man in my life - my Uncle - by my side, but no friends. I thought I found my friends when I eventually left at seventeen, but it was only after I met them, have them leave me six years later and subsequently found my real friends in Team CFVY did I truly know that life can't be faced alone.'**

She clasped the blonde's shoulders, forcing them to look dead into each other's eyes. Neo typed out one word on her Scroll, **'Repeat'** , before getting her to copy her actions and say the words after her. Neo knew she couldn't speak them out loud, but she could still mouth them.

Neo pointed to herself, a very simple action, and mouthed the word "I".

She balled her right fist in front of her, as if holding a cup. From there she yanked it backwards over her shoulder, all whilst mouthing the word "Refuse".

Next, the mute opened her hand, bent her middle finger and rubbed the tip of that finger up and down on the right side of her chest. "To live".

Finally, she pointed upwards with her right index finger at half an arm's reach away, then spun the hand around two times. "Alone".

 **'Now, repeat that out loud, and sign it back to me as well'**

"I. Refuse. To live. Alone." With each action, she spoke their respective meaning. Neo grinned, gesturing to repeat it. "I. Refuse. To live. Alone." Neo gestured again. "I refuse to live alone."

" _Louder,_ " she signed.

"I refuse to live alone. I refuse to live alone!" The final time, she shouted it out so loud it hurt her voice, but she didn't care. Juliette glanced down at Neo and grinned. "Thank you," she panted, that last cry hurting and taking more out of her than she expected.

 **'Jade's a good friend, I know she'll look after you'** Juliette looked up from the screen at the green haired girl in question, smiling as their eyes met.

"Yeah, she will." They both smiled at each other, and Neo grinned at the sight. The ice cream girl collected her Scroll and parasol, typing out one more thing for Jade before leaving.

 **'Look out for her Jade. She hides her loneliness pretty well, but I still notice that look in her eyes. If I don't see you before, we'll see you tomorrow evening ;) x'** The greenette started blushing, harshly whispering the woman's name to stop her from writing that again. Neo playfully winked and blew the younger woman a kiss before shattering into pieces and vanishing from the room.

"Mind telling me what that was about at the end?" Juliette enquired, her smile playful and eager to tease.

"I'm not saying a Dust damned thing."

"Why not? Embarrassed your best friend's going to find out your little secrets?"

"Don't you start." Try as she might, Jade couldn't keep the grin off her own face any longer, a sight that brought about a greater smile from the Maiden on the bed.

* * *

 **I'M SORRY!**

 **I FORGOT! AGAIN!**

But who likes double update days as a way of me apologising for missing out on last week's chapter as promised?...

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	83. Group 'Bonding' Experience

**YOU DO!**

...right?

Seriously, I'm sorry for missing last Thursday's chapter slot. I'm back to normal now, and the updates are too.

* * *

 **KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Byzantine eyes spotted the group of four heading towards her early the next morning, the fact there were only four of them throwing a slight curveball to the Receptionist, as was the fact they were in far more casual clothing that their regular combat attires.

"Good morning Team CFVYN."

"Mornin' Maron," Coco replied, a mug of coffee already in hand.

"Nice to see you all again. If you don't mind me asking, but where are Jade and your other teammate - I can never pronounce his name right - Yas-tu-hasi?"

"It's 'Yatsuhashi' Maron, though that was a new way I've heard it said. According to Neo, Jade went to go see Juno to catch up before heading to bed. As for the big guy, we had to return to Beacon Academy to get him medical attention after yesterday."

The brown haired woman looked slightly panicked by this news. "Oh dear, what happened?"

"We won't get into the nitty-gritty of it here, can we talk elsewhere?"

"Of course, meet me by the same room where we had our first briefing in about ten minutes, I've still got a little bit of paperwork to do beforehand." The quartet of students nodded and headed off as Maron continued her work.

As promised, ten minutes later Maron arrived to let them into the room.

"Right, sorry you had to wait. So tell me, what did happen to your teammate?" They looked amongst each other, nodded subtly about something the receptionist was unsure of. That was, until Coco spoke up.

"When we were up at the 'Summer Spirit' Spring, we noticed the Bio-Shields at the top of the waterfall."

Maron nodded. "Yes, we use Bio-Shields up there to stop anyone from falling over the edge of the waterfall and plummeting nearly 80 metres to their untimely death."

"Bio-Shields," Velvet countered, "are incredibly new technology, and are incredibly expensive to boot. Upkeep alone is worth tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Lien a year. Only a handful of places were given access to them on first launch, and in the list of those places come the four Huntsmen Academies. We know that Ozpin liaised with you about something, or some- _one_ , in the past couple of years. We would just like an honest answer from you." Maron glared at the four of them, who in turn were glaring back.

"I don't know where you got that information from, but I'd call this blackmailing. What would your Headmaster think of his best students resorting to such unsavoury tactics?"

"...Neo says, and I quote, 'Juliette told me everything'." Byzantine flew straight to meet pink and brown, and the owner of those multi-coloured eyes smirked, using her semblance to create the illusion that she was the Maiden in question. She held her hand out and created an illusion ball of electricity floating above her palm, and on seeing this Maron's skin paled.

The team leader reassured the panicked brunette. "We don't want anything from you Maron. This is not blackmail at all. We just want to hear it from the source what is actually going on here."

"..." The woman sat there, the revelation that others knew of the Maidens taking an immediate toll on her. "...No one should have known," she mumbled to herself, with only Velvet hearing her due to her enhanced hearing, "she... she isn't safe anymore."

"Yes she is." Heads turned to Velvet, who having heard the older woman rambling to herself. "Juliette can stay here. We want her to stay here, because she is safe. Knowing that the world we thought to be only fantasy and make believe exists is eye opening for sure, but that's another thing we'll keep to ourselves. We know why she's kept hidden away, and we aren't going to let her location be known. What's there to gain?"

"Velvs' right," Coco added, "as a team, we're not going to do anything that is going to put you, or Juliette, or anyone else in danger regarding the Maidens. Sure, we know about them and we weren't supposed to, but that's not going to leave this room. We promise that nothing shall leave the collective knowledge of Team CFVYN concerning any of this."

"If... if I have your word, then I suppose I would be foolish not to take it."

"Thank you Maron. Trust us when we say that." She nodded. "Thank you. Now, regarding Yatsuhashi, what happened was..."

* * *

"Don't you think that was a little harsh on her earlier?" Fox asked, changing into something far more comfortable than he had been in all day.

"Are you still on about that?" Coco shot back, the fashionista walking around in nothing more than her underwear and a deep chocolate brown knitted jumper.

"Yes Coco, I am still on about that. Maron has been nothing but supportive of us and what we've been doing for this entire mission, and for us to suddenly throw 'Hey there, we know about that big secret thing you're hiding from everyone!' at her isn't the best thing we could have done. Or even then, we could have done it a little better than we did."

"It worked, didn't it?"

"Maron looked completely and utterly spaced out through the rest of the 'debrief' we had with her, I wouldn't exactly call that a resounding success." The caramel tipped woman rubbed the back of her head, the truth from her Mate coming to light in her mind.

"Yeah, when you put it like that..."

" _It didn't click before now that what we did to her might not have been the best course of action?_ "

"No, alright? I messed up."

"Well, the first step to realising you have a problem is to-"

"Fox, you are not helping this situation at all."

"Of course I am, I'm lightening the mood." The team leader rolled her eyes and was about to chastise him further before there was a rhythm of three knocks on the door. Everyone eased off as Coco went to the door, opening it up to reveal Jade standing there, dressed in a very casual pair of shorts and a simple blue t-shirt.

"Hey guys..."

"Evening Jade. You ready for this?" The greenette nodded hesitantly, shuffling her way into the room. Coco hanged a little 'Do not disturb!' sign on the outside of the door, then shut and locked it before joining everyone else.

"Before we start, does anyone want to lay down some personal ground rules?" Velvet was taking charge at this stage, something no one objected to. None of the present parties spoke up and that worried the Faunus slightly - not due to the lack of input from others, but rather the lack from Jade. "Jade, is there anything you don't want to do? Because now's really the time to say it."

Blushing at the idea, she timidly spoke. "Can... um... can no one go... near my... rear, please? I've not done this sort of thing and I... yeah..."

"Jade, it's fine, not everyone wants it. That's one for Jade: no bum fun." Jade's originally pink tinted cheeks flushed crimson at the casual nature in which the Adel spoke about the subject.

As no one else wanted to speak up, Velvet broke the silence. "Alright. So other than Jade's request, we appear to all be alright with everything else. I'll lay out the basics again for Jade, as she hasn't been in one of these before. First and foremost, everyone needs to have had plenty to eat and drink before attending. I know we have; Jade?"

"Breaded chicken breast with peas and sweet potato fries about an hour ago."

"You beat me to the punch," the Rabbit joked, "I was going to ask you what you had just to make sure. Good to hear. There's plenty of water around, just in case you get parched at all. Always ask before joining in, sharing is caring, give as well as receive; basic etiquette. Also, Fox-"

"I know, I got them all ready."

"Wait, Fox is _joining_ us? I thought it was just... girls."

"I am perfectly fine if you want me to leave Jade, you're in charge tonight."

Neon green eyes stared at him in confusion and disbelief as Coco explained. "See, as you were new to the idea, we voted unanimously to let you be the one in charge of the whole evening. Whilst you don't have a monopoly over us, you are always the one to set the pace, to call the shots. It gives you complete freedom over whoever you're with at that time, as others here might not want to stay where they are whilst you go off and do something. Failure to do, or abusing your power, has the title stripped from you. But it is well within your power to have people leave if you and the Host agree to."

"That... actually sounds pretty fun actually." Everyone, even Fox, grinned at that.

"Group Hug!" Fox pulled everyone into an embrace, but the smaller and furthest away managed to stay that way in the pile of bodies.

"Well Jade, are you ready?"

"Yeah, let's go."

* * *

Coco was currently giving the green haired woman a massage, relaxing her muscles and de-stressing the 23 year old after a strenuous past two hours.

"...lower ...a little bit... oh yeah, there it is" she moaned in ecstasy.

"Still moaning at my touch there, Jade?" the fashionista teased.

"Shut up, you're good at it and you know it."

"And which one are we referring to this time?" Jade didn't comment, honestly believing Coco was just naturally gifted with her hands, regardless of how they were used. The fashionista smirked, looking out to the rest of the group. Fox was currently cuddling with Velvet on the bed opposite and Neo was currently disposing of some evidence of their little get together in the toilet, sauntering back out and making her way over to Jade and Coco, stopping by her clothes to grab her Scroll.

 **'So did you enjoy yourself tonight Jade?'**

"I really did. Thank you guys so much; I never would have thought something like this could have been so eye opening for me."

"Your welcome," Velvet called from across the room, with Fox giving a thumbs up as well.

"You know," Jade began, but decided against speaking out loud and gestured to Neo's Scroll, asking if she could use it. She was allowed and the greenette typed up the rest of her thought. **'Fox and Velvet actually look really cute together right now'**

"Yeah," Coco whispered back, "Fox actually had a huge crush on her back when we started Beacon." Jade couldn't help but let out a low "aww" at that, seeing the two cuddling on the bed with smiles on both of their faces. Neo tapped Jade on the shoulder, then mimed drinking from a glass. "I'd love some more water, thank you."

"Me too Shortcake, if you wouldn't mind." Neo signed something to her, making Coco flip her off, which Neo signed something else in response to that. "I don't hear you complaining."

"You know, I don't think I'll ever get used to only knowing part of a conversation."

"Learn Sign Language then. I'm pretty sure this is Atlesian Sign Language, based on the fact Neo's from Atlas, and it's not too hard to pick up if you've got time, patience and the right teacher."

"I'll consider it, but I think I like it as things are now with us not knowing."

"Whatever you say. It does get a little tedious though, having to rely on a third party for Neo to communicate." Jade didn't consider her initially and started to blush at the thought.

"I didn't think of that. Sorry."

"Don't worry, you're not going to hear her complain about it." Coco's teasing was cut off by part of a glass of water was spilt over her. Brown eyes stared up at the obvious culprit, and sure enough saw Neo now holding one full and one partially empty glass of water, look of cheeky innocence plastered over her face. "Oh, you've done it now."

" _You want to go then?_ " the ice cream girl playfully threatened.

"You're on." Coco stood, squaring off against the much shorter Neo.

" _Grab a towel, grab your shit, head next door. We've got a battle on our hands._ "

"I won't lose to you."

" _No, you'll be decimated, and begging me for more._ " Coco smirked as they went to grab towels and a couple of toys that they'd used, then went to leave.

"We're just going to be next door," Coco informed the neon green eyed girl, "but only interrupt if the world's about to end. I'm taking the sign on the door." Jade acknowledged her with a hum and nod, then waited for the door to shut completely before getting up and walking over to the cuddling pair on the bed.

"They've done this before, haven't they?" Jade asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"Yup" they both chimed.

"I thought so."

"Hey, want to join the sensible ones?" Velvet offered. Forgoing words, Jade simply nodded. Fox, being the one on the edge of the bed, jumped off to let Jade on, then re-joined the girls once she and Velvet were comfortable, gently sandwiching the green haired woman between the pair of them. "So you definitely enjoyed yourself, didn't you?"

"Of course I did, you were all kind and willing to tone it down with me, and for that I'm thankful."

"At the end of the day," Fox added, "we were doing this for you. What's now going on next door excluded, none of this has been for us mainly. The girls promised you they'd help relieve you any which way they could. They don't like going back on their word." Jade smiled, relaxing and letting the person either side of her hug in closer.

"You're really cosy to cuddle up against," Velvet mentioned after a few moments of silence.

"Velvet you only say that because you've got your hands around my boobs."

"...Was it really _that_ obvious?"

"You're losing your touch Velvs."

"Blame Coco, alright? This thing on our shoulders makes some of our partner's traits seep into one another, and clearly her outgoing nature and lack of subtlety have crept in." The trio giggled, then truly relaxed themselves and let exhaustion truly take over. The past four weeks had been incredibly hectic for all of them; dealing with Neo's disappearance, combatting Grimm on a regular basis here, fighting against the Akkorokamui on multiple occasions, learning of and about the Maidens; and in their collective mind's eye, this next week of nothing but relaxation was needed by all parties involved.

* * *

 **{END OF PART 7}**

* * *

Dust and done-did!

PFFT HAHAHA! Oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't tyoe that out with a straight face. No, **'Senseless'** isn't even close to done. Reminder that the final chapter is "Chapter 110", meaning you're stuck with me until July!

But we're moving on from things soon. You'll see what I mean when next week comes around.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	84. Graduation Day

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

 **{TIME SKIP}**

This takes place at the end of Team CFVYN's Fourth Year at Beacon, roughly 9 months after the events of the last chapter

* * *

Two synchronised alarms rang at precisely 6:47 on this mid-July morning.

One alarm belonged to Team JNPR's resident Rensexual, hammer wielding sloth enthusiast, Nora Valkyrie. She jumped straight out of bed, landing on the floor with her hands placed firmly on her hips, glee spread across her features.

"It's finally here again," she bellowed, earning disapproving grunts of 'we don't want this, we want to sleep' from the other three members of the team. She didn't care. "I can't wait!"

The other alarm rang from their sister team, RWBY. Unsurprisingly, the owner of the noise maker was none other than the team leader. The crimson tipped young adult, a phrase she loved hearing now having been around many other people who had been hearing that for the past two years already, sat up with stars in her eyes and rolled off her swinging bunk bed.

"It's time!" she squealed.

"Ruby..." her alabaster haired girlfriend groaned from her own bed as her teammates across the room each took a pillow and buried their heads underneath them.

"No Weiss, it's that time of year again, and it's super special this time..."

Both girls ran to their dorm doors, threw them open simultaneously to stare at the other early riser and greeted the other in the middle of the hallway with the one reason they were both up so early, chanting it at the same time.

"It's International Sloth _and_ Pancake Day!"

"Coco and her team are Graduating today!"

"Wait, what?"

"Wait, what?"

"Nora, don't you care that the only real friends we have as a group from the year above are graduating today and that in a year's time that will be us up on that podium?"

"Hmm..." the bubbly ginger thought out loud before giving a resounding "Nope!", popping the 'p' as she usually did when she was convinced of her own actions, "I'm more concerned about the fact that it's a day about Sloths _and_ Pancakes, and you know how much I _loooove_ both of those things!"

The scythe wielder sighed, "Yeah okay, I'mma just go back to my room now and-"

"Sure, see you later!" Nora bounded back into her room and closed the door with slightly too much force behind her, leaving Ruby alone in the corridor. She trudged herself back into the room, slowly and gently shutting the door in complete contrast to Nora. She turned around and slumped against the door, her silver eyes glancing up only when she felt other eyes staring at her. Sure enough, Weiss from her own bed and Blake from hers and Yang's shared were staring at her, the former annoyed at the sudden wake-up cry from above her, the latter irked at Nora's apparent inability to have any other settings other than; 'Sleeping' [rarely used], 'Snoring' [that's better], 'Loud' [near constant], Hungry [comes and goes, but when it comes you know about it] and Excited [almost always]. Sometimes, it was even a mixture of multiple, but that was not a thought she wanted this early on a Friday morning.

"Please tell me I was never _that_ bad..." the younger adult begged in a whisper. Weiss gestured for her girlfriend to lay on her bed - which she complied with - while Blake saw that Ruby was being more considerate now and would most likely let the rest of them sleep a bit more, so she took the chance to do so and cuddled back up to her Mate, who naturally slept like a rock through the entire ordeal.

"No, never like that. You were boisterous at times, a little over-excited at others, but you always kept yourself in relative check. And you were most certainly never _that_ single-minded about something."

"Okay, good."

"Not unless that something was a certain seven letter word I know."

"Is that word 'Partner'?"

Weiss looked at Ruby, who smiled back innocently enough. She wasn't sure if it was the early time or the fact the brunette's naivety was endearing yet marginally irritating, but she didn't look too pleased to hear that. "No, you boob. It was 'Cookies'."

"Oh." Silver eyes found interest elsewhere in the room, but felt the urge to return to the fair skinned girl beside her. Sure enough, she was treated to a nice dusting of pink on the older woman's cheeks. "What's wrong Weiss?"

"Were you really that infatuated with me that you consider yourself almost single-minded about me?"

"Of course," the reaper said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "I accidently confessed my feelings for you ages ago, and they hadn't faded in all the time we were forced by your Dad to take things painfully slow. I love you Weiss, and that was never going to stop."

"You dolt..." she muttered with a grin, kissing the younger woman on the forehead, replying to her in a way that omitted words, but packed just as much impact. They lay there on the ex-Heiress' bed in silence - Weiss remaining under the covers, Ruby atop them - for what felt like only a few minutes before Ruby spoke up again.

"I'm worried though."

"About?"

"Team CFVYN."

"Ruby Rose, have you not been paying attention?" The younger of the two shrugged slightly, her form shrinking in shame.

"Maybe? What about? Because I might have been." Externally, Weiss shook her head at the silliness of her girlfriend's thoughts; internally, she was smiling and laughing with her at them.

"Those five are the strongest unit in this Academy. They've done things now that even trained Huntsmen shy away from, and they were still learning at the time. Why are you worried about them, they're going to pass with flying colours."

"It's not so much _that_ that's worrying me, it's... y'know... Neo." Everything made sense now to the ex-Heiress, and all that came from her was a near-monotonous "I see" in response. "I mean, you three did threaten her pretty bad when they came back from their mission at that resort place, and you weren't the nicest to her for a good while after that too."

"First off, we hadn't seen her since the fight between all of us at the start of the year. As such, we didn't know anything about why she did what she did until way after the fact. So, when we were coming down the corridor to see her attempting to hug you, I personally believe that we responded in an appropriate manner given our knowledge of the events and the circumstances. Having since learned properly what actually occurred and why she did what she did, it not only made sense, but for me at least I felt guilty for treating her the way we did then. And when we had our little... 'clarification' with her, it proved definitively that she meant everything. Even if Yang and Blake somehow haven't swayed, you don't need to worry about that from me."

"Thanks Weiss." Ruby leaned up and pecked the fair skinned young woman on the cheek, bringing forth yet another blush from her, this one having slightly more prominence than the one she sported previously that morning. "It's so easy to make you blush," the reaper joked.

"Only because I'm so ghostly pale," she responded, "it shows easier on my skin."

"Nope," Ruby retorted, "it's because I am too adorable, and I melted your cold heart."

"...I will give you that one, but only because I love you, my Rosebud."

"I love you too, Snowpea."

"Get a room..." came the groggy groan of the blonde from across the way.

"No," both Weiss and Ruby looked at each other, finding it funny that they both had the same train of thought and spoke so perfectly in sync it sounded almost like one voice. Their giggles were interrupted by another more aggressive groan, followed by something thrown at them from afar.

Ruby gave in to the requests, concluding it would be more beneficial and overall easier to deal with than the prospect of antagonising Yang, and by proxy Blake, and having to deal with that afterwards. "We'll be quiet," she said, poking her head out slightly from the bottom bunk. There was one more grunt before the soft *thwmp* of Yang's head hitting a pillow again, signalling they were in the clear.

"When did we stop calling each other nicknames ironically to annoy those two and actually started calling one another by them normally?"

"No clue Weiss, no clue at all."

* * *

Teams RWBY and JNPR filed into the main hall along with everyone else in their year in eager anticipation, the events of the morning having been largely pushed to the wayside, and Blake carrying a very important backpack on her back with her. A certain someone was incredibly curious as to what was contained in there, but she wasn't getting the answer she wanted after multiple asks, even though no one had been in the bag to change anything about it.

"Is it a sloth?"

"No."

"Pancake mixing equipment?"

"No."

"A _baby_ sloth?! Please say yes..."

"Still a no, Nora."

Nora had to be restrained by JPR and Yang when they all went down for breakfast and she was told she couldn't celebrate 'International Sloth and Pancake Day' today because there was something equally as - if not more - important happening for their friends.

"By why?" the ginger moaned in dissatisfaction at her current predicament. "It's sloths _and_ pancakes! That's demanding to be celebrated!"

"Because it's graduation for the Fourth Years, and Team CFVYN are in the runnings for one of the S Tier slots this year. We all wanted to be there for them and offer some support." By this point they were already in the hall and seated, so Nora had lost. That didn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that she wasn't going to go down fighting. The back and forth the Valkyrie had with her team and their friends continued as everyone else in attendance filed in, even getting slightly heated when Weiss mentioned she had never heard of the day, and Nora bit back saying how she was such "an Atlas girl" that she hadn't had the joys of the day. Fortunately for the Third Year teams and everyone in the immediate vicinity, the Professors of Beacon walked onto the stage, silencing the crowd and fizzling out the argument.

"Welcome everyone. I'm happy to be saying this once again, but we have a fine selection of young adults here today who have grown massively since their time with us started four years ago. A lot has happened in that time, a lot of good has been done and a lot of learning has taken place. Even though you are all graduating today, you will not stop learning. Every mission, no matter how great or small, will always offer up something that you can take away and learn from. But enough about that, I think. Let us begin the ceremony." There was a gentle ripple of applause after Professor Ozpin's introduction that died down fairly quickly. They were all sure he knew - what with him being Headmaster of this school for long enough and the fact he's always in the know about everything - but after the official graduation and semi-formal get together, there was always an unofficial one thrown by a group that all the graduating teams are invited to, as are some Third Year teams as well, so it was always in his best interests to give the minimal amount of formality and necessary speech needed to move right along with the graduation. Ozpin was always good like that.

There was no particular order in which the teams graduated. It wasn't alphabetically, because the first team graduating was Team SMRK {Shamrock}, and CFVYN was most definitely before that in the alphabet. Nor was it reverse alphabet, as after SMRK came ZAFR {Zaffre}. And it wasn't by Tiers either, as SMRK were given A Tier Status, then ZAFR were C Tiers with the strong potential, if they did their best and really pushed themselves in missions, to make it to B Tiers within a few years. It made the wait even more painful as there was no way they could know when Team CFVYN were going to be called up.

"This is killing me," Ruby commented to her team in a soft whisper, "when are they going to be up?"

"We'll just have to wait Rubes, they'll be there." The hooded young woman pouted slightly as she slumped back into her seat, not particularly fond of this waiting around.

The time in which they were in there seemed to drag to the point of inactivity, where the solitary clock in the hall looked almost as if the hands has stopped ticking and all they could do is remain in this purgatory of timelessness. Ruby even swore she saw the hand tick _backwards_ a few times.

"Now, I'm sure there are a few of you in here today as guests, or indeed any of our recent batch of newly qualified Huntsmen and Huntresses, who are wondering why two teams haven't been mentioned yet." Ruby perked up immediately, her eyes widening and, if she had them, her ears would have stood alert atop her head. The conversation topic cropped up on one Team Night back in the early half of their Second Year about what Faunus each of the three non-Faunus would be had they been born with traits of their choosing.

Yang was positive that she'd be a dragon Faunus (no surprises there), even though Blake insisted that dragon Faunus, and just dragons in general, didn't exist, a fact her girlfriend didn't appreciate much. But when it was mentioned she would be more like a Golden Retriever, Blake backed away slightly - her looming distrust of canines never quite conquered, and dog Faunus seemed to be under that same umbrella. Yang did her best not to laugh uproariously at the reaction.

Weiss was a little more difficult to suss out, but they settled on a feline Faunus much like Blake. Rather than being exactly like Blake though, Weiss' strive for perfection would have been amplified and refusing anything less than such would have been her default answer to anything. She didn't appreciate that her team felt so negatively about her actions, but they were all in jest.

But when it came to Ruby, all three of the older girls simultaneously chanted out the words "wolf Faunus" as if they'd been conditioned to say it. Easily excitable, bundles of energy, makes friends with practically everyone; it was a no brainer. Weiss did throw in the curveball of how, if she theoretically became a canine Faunus of any kind, consuming any chocolate would be nearly fatal. Ruby whined on hearing that, earning a laugh from the others as their collective point had been proven of how she would have been a scythe wielding Wolf, whimpering and all.

"That is because," Ozpin continued, "these are the two teams who have shown the most skill consistently over all aspects of their lives here at Beacon. They have excelled here as students, and myself and my colleagues agree that they will excel in future life. So; Plume Celosia, Hebe Speedwell, Linaria Snapdragon and Xander Bailnce of Team PHLX {Phlox}, and Coco Adel, Fox Alistair, Velvet Scarlatina, Yatsuhashi Daichi and Orchid Russet of Team CFVYN, please come join me the stage."

That was the cue she had been waiting for.

The second she saw the unmistakable height of Yatsuhashi at the front of the hall, Ruby began cheering louder than she ever had before that day, embarrassing herself and her teammates on her behalf. On stage, Coco heard the cheering coming from the young leader from halfway down the hall, so to tease her she lowered her sunglasses ever so slightly and winked at the hooded girl from afar, causing the cheering from her to stop abruptly as she choked on air. The sound caused a few giggles from the graduating team on stage and a few pockets of people dotted around the audience as well. If you were paying close attention to her - which not many people were, they were too focussed on the nine soon-to-be-ex-students walking up to the stage - you would have noticed that even Glynda Goodwitch cracked a small smile at that as well.

"The nine young adults behind me now are what we as teachers strive to create in all budding Huntsmen and Huntresses who walk through our doors. These teams are not invincible, these teams have made mistakes. But what they _have_ done better than others, is they have adapted to those mistakes, found ways to overcome the obstacles placed in front of them and better themselves so that they do not falter again. They have shown us the true values of those who can protect this world, and so it is with greatest pride that I hereby certify Team CFVYN and Team PHLX as S Tier Huntsmen Teams!" The applause was grandiose to the nine on stage, as all of a sudden hundreds of people stood and were cheering for them, and only them. Some, like Yatsuhashi, Linaria and Plume, were trying to keep a serious face on, with team leader Plume being the only one to crack. Others, or more specifically the rest of CFVYN, were grinning and soaking in the praise that came their way.

' _I would have missed this..._ ' Fox commented, staring out on to the crowd of people clapping for them.

' _As would I,_ ' Neo replied as she swivelled her head to look at Fox, a genuine smile on her face, ' _and I have you to thank for giving me this memory._ '

' _And I you._ ' He turned to look back at her, and they stood there smiling at one another.

"And with these two teams done, we have come to the end of the ceremony. I wish to thank you all for attending, and I look forward to seeing all you Huntsmen and Huntresses later this evening for the Graduation Ball." There was one final round of applause as the teaching faculty and the S Tiers left the stage.

* * *

With Phlox being a type of Genus of predominantly lilac/purple flowers, the team of PHLX are also named after lilac coloured flowers.

We're getting into what I like to call "The Future Arc" of ' **Senseless** ' - the final of the three big arcs of the story. As you can tell from this chapter, that comes from the fact we've jumped forward to Graduation Day for Team CFVYN, meaning we've got the rest of the world to explore now without the confines of Beacon to hold them down.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	85. Fruits of Their Labour

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Cocoooo!" The caramel tipped leader barely had a chance to register what she was hearing before she was tackled by Ruby to the floor, the pair sliding a good few metres of the smooth tiled floor after impact.

"Seriously Rubes?" her sister commented as she strolled over past Velvet and a couple of others in the hallway they were talking to - emphasis on the 'were' talking to - knowing she was going to have to pry her silver eyed relative off the fashionista.

"You did it! I can't believe you did it! You're S Tiers, oh my Oum this is amazing! Well, I mean, I _did_ believe you can do it; I'm just shocked it happened. Wait, no I'm not, I'm... uh I- hey!"

"Alright, that's quite enough Rubes." To stop her from crushing the gunner to death with one of her famous tackle hugs, Yang had grabbed Ruby by the scruff of her hood and held her slightly higher than she could stand, her feet dangling off the floor comically.

"Yaaang! Let me down, I want to talk to her."

"And I don't want you to be the person known for killing an S Tier Team Leader before they've even had that title for less than half an hour." As much as she didn't want to believe it, Yang had a point and the desperate attempt to escape ceased. Oddly enough, she was down again not five seconds after she stopped flailing.

"And _I_ would rather like to keep my Mate alive for the foreseeable future," Velvet added, joining the two sisters and Coco in their new location. "Plus, I didn't exactly want to be feeling ' _Panic, Dread, Doom_ ' from her, so I would have found a way to pry you off eventually if that had persisted." Ruby looked ashamed at what she did, hanging her head and sticking her bottom lip out. "I mean it in a joking manner Ruby; we all know how excited you can get."

"I just wanted to speak with you..."

"It's fine Red, I get it," Coco mentioned as she eased herself back to standing, dusting herself off to make herself more presentable, "I just wasn't expecting it, but I'm not complaining. In all fairness, I've gotten used to your tackle hugs by now. Not the sudden surprise of you hitting into me, but the pain and lack of air have gotten easier to deal with."

"Velvet said how you were feeling 'Dread' and 'Panic' when I was hugging you." The fashionista shot a quick glance to the Rabbit, who shrugged.

"I just... wasn't anticipating it, is all. I'm still on the high after the ceremony, so I'm not all there." Ruby accepted the excuse, and Coco sent a feeling of ' _Relief_ ' across their Mark at the fact the lie worked. Yang noticed the faint glow on the shoulder, but chose not to comment. It was a Mate thing, and what she'd picked up from Blake telling her, plus first-hand experience, was that calling someone out on their Marks glowing made some Faunus feel uncomfortable doing so again, and it can actually weaken some bonds if the unease persists. Coco and Velvet, Yang and Blake were both strong couple with a good connection between the respective pairings and at least one of the pair was hard-headed, so the weakening bond was very unlikely. Still, being called out was most definitely an unpleasant experience, and one Yang planned on avoiding.

"I promise I won't do it again," the young reaper replied, equal parts ashamed and annoyed at herself. Coco's response to that was to ruffle the young woman's hair.

"Ruby, I don't care about that. Part of your charm is your abundant energy and enthusiasm, and if that comes across in the form of overzealous hugs, then so be it." Coco leaned in, initiating the hug this time. Her eyes naturally drifted shut as her hug continued. "Honestly, I am going to miss it." As the beret wearer's eyes drifted open and her hug broke, she saw the girlfriends of the two sisters approaching them. "I'm going to miss all of you. You four are going to do great, I can tell." With one action, the feline Faunus' ears caught on and a smile grew in her face.

"Is it just me Weiss," Blake commented, a teasing tone to her voice, "or do I sense that the great Coco Adel is going to start crying?"

"No, I am not. It's just a cold that's been coming on for the past few-"

"Yes, she was," Velvet corrected.

"Bitch!" came the immediate, almost instinctual response from the fashionista at her Mate's admittance of her emotions. The Rabbit merely shrugged, a smug grin on her face as Team RWBY laughed. It didn't take too long for Coco to find the funny side of it too. "C'mon let's go say hi to the rest of the team; it wasn't just me that graduated, everyone else did too."

Fox, Neo and Yatsuhashi were all having a talk with Doctor Oobleck when their teammates joined them, Team RWBY in tow.

"...in conclusion, I believe the winner would be... Ah, Ms. Adel, Ms. Scarlatina." The over-caffeinated Professor turned back to the three he was previously having a conversation with. "I shall leave you five alone. Congratulations to you all once again."

"But sir, who do you think would win?" Fox almost begged for an answer.

"In due time, Mr. Alistair. For now, I have other now ex-students I have been meaning to speak with. I shall see you later though, I presume?" Without even waiting for an answer, he was gone.

"You do realise we may never get a solid answer from any of them, right?" Yatsuhashi mentioned.

"I know... hey Coco."

"Let me guess, you were asking him about that hypothetical fight between the five teachers and his opinion on who believe would win, but right at the last second found some excuse to leave the conversation promising to continue it in the future - but he'll most likely forget?"

"Hit the nail on the head."

Ruby approached the three she hadn't already greeted yet that day, throwing her arms around the shortest one there. "Neo! Well done, you did amazing!" The mute smiled, her eyes swapping to both pink. But when those eyes glanced up, they spotted three heads of hair - golden yellow, snow white and shadow black respectively - looking at her, and immediately they swapped to ivory white and Neo shattered away from the hug, appearing a few metres away from where she was. The sudden disappearance of another body to lean on caused the reaper to stumble forward, but she was caught by the 7ft tank standing by. "Thanks, Yatsuhashi. And congratulations also."

"Thank you, Ruby."

"What's up Ni?" Fox inquired making his way back to where his girlfriend was.

' _Maybe it's the fact three people - who I'm not sure if they still hate my guts or not - are staring at me embracing the reason they hate me in the first place... well, second place._ '

"Neo, do you honestly not remember New Years at _all?_ " The mute raised an eyebrow and shook her head, wandering what could be that bad that she wouldn't remember an entire day's worth of information. "You disappeared in the morning without a word, so we tried searching for you but to no avail. We ran into Ruby who was searching for her team, and we tracked them - and you - down to an old martial arts dojo near Vale's outskirts. We busted our way in to find you lying on the floor and the other three around you, informing us that was your idea. They showed us the note you wrote them and everything. Apparently, it was your way of smoothing out any creases in your relationship with them, but you a few harder knocks than you were clearly expecting." The ice cream girl glanced over at WBY, who were smiling at her.

' _I did?_ ' Her memory was knocked slightly askew after that encounter, so Neo's brain wasn't completely in sync with everything and she had occasional blips with what she could remember, but for the most part she was completely fine.

"Go over to them and prove it." Readying herself with a couple of long, hard breaths, she walked towards them. But once she got right next to Fox, she reached out to take his hand, clearly not ready to face it head on alone.

The small 4'10" woman stared up at the much taller Trainee Huntresses opposite her, even the 5'3" Weiss seemed giant to her; such is one of the disadvantages of her stature. She was nervous, more than she had felt previously. Ursa, Fuck-No's, even the Nuckelavee and Akkorokamui were a cake walk compared to how she felt with this. As she nervously let go of Fox's hand, the world around her seemingly stopped. Conversations being had by all other parties in the area ceased in an instant, the world muffled by the tunnel vision of fear she had walked into. Everything blurred except the three focuses of her attention, the three women in front. Hesitantly, she raised her hand and waved a hello, her face contorting into a forced smile.

To her surprise, all three of them responded with the identical gesture, Neo's world coming back to life on seeing them repeat it.

" _You... understand me?_ " she queried, still in Sign.

"They can't," her boyfriend clarified, "not completely, at least. By their own merits, they've taught themselves the absolute basics like 'Hello', 'Goodbye', 'My name is...', 'Letters', that sort of thing. They wanted to- well, I'll let them explain." He gently pushed her closer to them slightly, even the slightest coaxing forward was met with heavy resistance from her.

"Listen Ice Cream, what you did on New Year's took guts," Yang began.

"I admit, myself and Yang had a hard time dealing with what you were putting forward, especially Yang - you dislocated my girlfriend's, her sister's arm. It was only _long_ after the fact did we know what happened. And your..." Weiss was unsure how to put this gracefully, so she settled on, "'invite' was very cryptic, your motives were not."

"What the three of us have been doing in the time since New Year's has been tough, but ultimately worth it." Blake took the backpack off her back, reached inside and grabbed the contents from it. Out came a book that was handed to Neo. It was very thrown together, evident by the cover being taken from a large children's book that they found with the word "Title?" scribbled across the front in large, bold letters. There was some more writing underneath in much neater and smaller handwriting - Neo guessed it would be Weiss' handiwork - saying "No Puns".

Yang gestured to the tome in her hand, eager for the mute to see its contents. "We wanted you to see it above all others. We couldn't do it alone though, so we did have to ask for some help from your teammates when you weren't around, they are the kings and queens of this topic." That made Neo even more interested in what this had to offer, so she eagerly opened the cover to the first page.

 _-Page1-_

 _Why would three Huntresses in Training want to dedicate their time to writing a book? Well, the answer is very simple._

 _During our time at Beacon Academy in Vale, we had a couple of friends who had some form of disability that limited their ability to communicate naturally like most people do. One was completely blind, so they were relying on braille to read any block of text. Another was rendered mute through contracting a disease that took their vocal chords from them. This meant that Sign Language was their go to form of communicating, but as only a handful of people in the Academy knew it we were reliant on this person writing it down on paper or typing it up on their Scroll, or even having to have the message passed through a third party._

 _No more._

 _Nobody deserves to feel like their lack of voice means they have no voice, so this book is essentially a Pictionary that give you some commonly used words and phrases, and provides images and written instructions on how to 'say' them in Sign Language..._

Neo looked at the three girls in shock. They gestured to keep reading, and she happily did so.

 _-Page 136-_

 _Knowing and understanding Sign Language isn't just useful for when you're trying to communicate with someone who is HOH or mute, it can be used practically as well. In the field, Huntsmen and Huntresses could use Sign Language on missions to silently talk to one another without alerting anyone to their presence. This is especially useful against Grimm such as Goliaths or Lepidopterans, whose hearing is..._

 _-Page 74-_

 _...inclusion is important for them. Much like the Faunus minorities, stigmas are often used against those who can't talk or can't hear when they are spoken to..._

Neo didn't need any more information to tell her that they had forgiven her, but also that they had done something _for_ her - doing their collective best to make Beacon, at least, a lot more disability friendly. Knowing it was most likely a strong near-final draft but not the end piece, Neo chucked the book down and ran at them all, hugging into Blake in the middle with tears streaming down her face, her shoulders hitching as she sobbed tear of happiness into her top. Weiss wrapped her arms around Neo and Blake, and Yang encircled them all.

' _Do you believe us now?_ ' Fox asked.

' _Without a shadow of a doubt._ '

* * *

The official post-Graduation Get-Together went off hitch free. There were a couple of students who had maybe had a drink or two before attending, as they were swaying ever so slightly at the toast to their futures. But after _that_ formality was over, most people were filing out at a steady pace to get ready for the unofficial party.

Team CFVYN were readying themselves in their old dorm room. Now that they had graduated, the room was technically no longer theirs, as they were no longer part of the student body at the Academy. That said, Glynda reminded them all at the official Get-Together that the room will not have the locks changed until after the academic year had finished, so technically the teams could remain in the room until that time. Most did, but there were some teams who had already pooled together and were renting space or had outright bought their own accommodation together. Team CFVYN was not one of those teams, despite having a much larger sum of money to their name thanks in part to there being five on the team, but also the fact that Coco insisted that they only took mid-B Tier missions and upwards. They did occasionally drop to some easy C-Tier work to give themselves some time off; by finishing those missions at record speeds, it left the rest of their allotted mission time free for them to take a break and plan things out for their collective futures. One thing they did after their mission at 'The Four Season Springs' was create a team bank account - lovingly dubbed 'The CFVY Pot' by Velvet and the name stuck - that they could put most of their earnings in and dive into whenever there was something team related that they'd need a larger sum of money than they had set aside for their individual and everyday accounts.

And the conversation topic that came to light as they were readying themselves for the party that night brought 'The CFVY Pot' into the mix.

"Hey, Neo?" The mute looked over at the Faunus of the group. "When are you two going to propose?" The couple paused what they were doing and looked at each other, obviously talking to each other in their heads. Yatsuhashi finished sending a message before closing his Scroll and joining in the conversation.

"You did say that you were going to at some point after graduation."

"Not straight afterwards," the copper haired boy clarified.

"Why not tonight? I mean, you both have your respective rings for one another, and it'd be a great way to send Team CFVYN off in style."

"Maybe we don't want that," Fox suggested, "maybe we just want something a lot less grandiose, something intimate and personal rather than having the entire year and more there to witness it."

"Yeah, but think of al-"

"Velvs, let's let them do their own thing."

"But Coco, aren't you normally the one suggesting for people to do this sort of thing?" Coco ignored the pleas from her Mate and went up to her teammates.

"Whilst both Velvet and Yatsuhashi have valid points, you're the ones proposing to each other. When you're ready, do it. Not before."

" _Thanks Coco, it means a lot._ " The gunner smiled sweetly before grabbing her toiletries and heading to the shower. ' _Fox, sweetie?_ '

' _Yeah?_ '

' _We're still going to do it tonight, right?_ '

' _That was our plan. Unless you're chickening out._ '

' _Please, I honestly thought_ _ **you'd**_ _be the one to pull out last minute._ '

' _Don't I always?_ ' he teased.

' _Not while there are children in the room, dear._ '

' _A) No one can hear us, and B) I_ _ **am**_ _the metaphorical child in the room, remember?_ ' She smirked, as did he. ' _Where is yours?_ '

' _Back pocket of the trousers I'm going to wear. They're cargo pants, so they'll be baggy enough to hide the box. You?_ '

' _It's loose in my pocket right now, so when I get showered I was planning on slipping it onto a chain you gave me whilst I get changed, then wear a high necked top to obscure it. Even then, I'm going to illusion it out of sight on the off chance something happens._ ' Fox mentally applauded the intricacy of her plan.

' _Crafty plan; I love it._ '

She just shot him a smug look back. ' _If they know as well, it's not a big surprise, is it? Sure, they know we are proposing to one another. Just not when._ ' They both winked at one another then proceeded to continue getting ready for the evening.

* * *

Yup, I'm going there, and I don't care.

It's been mentioned in interviews with Brad Bird - dir. of "The Incredibles" 1 & 2 - about 'the mundane and the fantastic'. We've had some fantastic. Now, gimme some mundane. And even then, it's Team CFVYN mundane.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	86. Well, If You're Going to Propose

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Not going to lie, this is a pretty awesome place," Coco admitted as they moved away from the floor and to the sides of the hall, finding a bunch of empty seats for them all to take a break in. Team FYRR's female member Romaine Eldr spoke with her father, an owner of a club just past Vale's main city borders called 'The Brinnande', to see if their year could hold the unofficial there, providing everyone paid on the door so as they wouldn't lose out on money as an establishment. He agreed, so everyone had a proper place to go for the party. Having never been to 'The Brinnande' before, CFVYN were surprised at the size of it considering how out of the way it was.

"It is very different, but that adds to its charm," Yatsuhashi commented, drink in hand. The club itself had a very Nordic vibe, with lots of its interior and rear exterior décor giving the impression that the place was an old Chieftain's abode, complete with strong wooden support beams, chandeliers lit by 'candlelight' (it was actually Fire Dust moulded with wax so that the flame produced burnt as bright as regular electric lights), horizontal support beams carved with Ancient Mistrali text, even seats were draped with the fur off an Ursa's hide. Obviously, it was fake; but everyone knew that and just accepted it to go along with the visual aesthetic of the club.

"This is a new one on me too, but I'm so happy that you invited me to it."

"Jade, why wouldn't we?" The neon green eyed girl shrugged, grabbing her cocktail from the table and sipping it nervously.

"I don't know. It's just... this is a party for you guys, you're Huntsmen and Huntresses now. _And_ you're the best of the best too. I feel like a gate crasher, piggybacking on your glory."

"You need to stop that. You helped us all out so much back in September/October, and for all intents and purposes you are a civilian. You didn't get _any_ praise back then, so that's being made up for now. So just enjoy yourself, alright?" Jade saw the determination behind the reflective lensed stare she was receiving from Coco, and rather than argue a losing battle with her, she accepted it and raised her glass. Everyone present from Team CFVYN at the table - Coco, Velvet and Yatsuhashi - did so as well.

"Besides," Velvet added, "you and Yatsu are essentially a couple; with a 'Plus1' system for the party, why wouldn't you get invited?" The woman smiled, admitting when she was wrong to be thinking so badly of herself and started to relax a lot more.

Meanwhile, Fox and Neo were staring down at the party from a high balcony ledge.

' _It's getting pretty full down there, I think that's our entire year and change._ ' Neo looked across to Fox, who was still staring down at the large group of twenty-somethings enjoying their final night as students/first night as Huntsmen and Huntresses. ' _You ready for this?_ ' Fox finally drew his eyes away from the crowd and locked eyes with Neo. She looked determined, and rightly so. She'd been thinking of this for years now, almost the same length of time as he'd known her properly, although he knew from conversations prior that she had marriage on the mind even as she and Velvet were still "Study Buddies" and he was blissfully unaware of her presence in their dorm room. He was still on board with the entire idea, and he honestly couldn't dream of a world without her anymore; it was just... ' _A lot to take in?_ ' He raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

"How did you-"

' _We've been together for over two years, and you're_ _ **still**_ _asking that question?_ ' It clicked in his head, and it drooped in shame. The mute approached him, kissing him on the cheek and reaching her arm across the man's shoulders. ' _We don't have to do this tonight, you are aware, right? I know we both said we wanted to before, but our minds can change. We can call it off, have a more intimate proposal with just the others there._ ' Fox took a deep breath, grabbing the box from his rear trouser pocket. It was a small box, large enough to fit the ring for Neo's dainty finger but still compact enough to not be noticeable to anyone at a passing glance, human or Faunus alike.

He fiddled with it a little, feeling its weight, looking over every detail of the deep burgundy velvet case, before starting to slip it back into his rear pocket. But as he was doing so, he paused and looked back at Neo. Her smile was infectious; it broke it the copper haired boy out of his stupor and brought newfound determination to him, the man now slipping the case in his front pocket for ease now.

"No, we do it tonight. I know how long you've waited for this moment, we might as well end the year with a bang. Besides, we want people to still remember this, so the longer we're waiting around, they're going to be drinking more and getting progressively more drunk as the seconds tick by."

' _You're right, it's now or never._ ' They leaned in for a quick peck, knowing they'll have more time for kissing in a minute. Fox shook himself out and positioned himself a few steps in front of the banister that was stopping anyone from drunkenly stumbling down a storey. Neo, on the other hand, stood much further back - essentially at the club's wall - and took out white Air Dust crystal from her outfit pocket. ' _Are you sure you don't want me to just kick you over the edge?_ '

"No thanks," he chuckled, "I prefer to keep my Aura intact for the rough landing I'm about to have. This'll do the same trick with less of an impact on my Aura."

' _Yeah, okay. Also, this method is also 50 Lien dearer than a simple boot to the chest._ '

"Nobody's going to know it's you if you throw the Dust from far enough back."

Neo rolled her eyes. ' _Fine,_ ' they narrowed in on Fox once more, their colours switching sides, ' _but if you scream, I get an extra 200 Lien for my dress._ '

' _What?! Are you crazy?_ '

' _You're right, 250; that also covers this Dust crystal._ '

' _That hardly seems fair, wasn't part of the plan for me to cry out so they'd get out of the way before I hit the ground?_ ' She smirked and reared her hand back.

' _You catch on just that little bit too slow for my liking._ ' With that final remark, the ice cream girl threw the crystal hard at the floor just in front of him, then sprinted as quietly as she could to one side so that it looked like she wasn't the one doing the throwing. Having timed this before, Fox jumped just as the crystal hit the ground, so when the surge of air from the exploding Dust shard hit him, he was high enough off the ground to clear the banister instead of shattering through it. The orange themed man sored through sky of the club, wanting to scream, but also not wanting to owe his girlfriend 250 Lien for performing an instinctive bodily command.

"Look out!" someone from the crowd cried, spotting Fox careening through the air towards them. Everyone turned, then promptly screamed and parted, giving the scarred man plenty of room to collide with the hardwood floor. There were audible gasps and groans as he landed with a heavy crash, rolling a couple of times and skidding to a halt on his stomach, punctuated by the sudden record scratch of the music grinding to an unceremonious halt. While most of the attention was there with him, some people turned to look at where he flew from. They saw Neo approaching the banister from the side, her face awash with horror at what just happened. They fell for the trick. Those who focussed on neither of those members of Team CFVYN instead turned to the remaining three and the green haired girl with them as they called his name and pushed their way through the crowd to get to him.

Neo's shattering teleport closed the distance between them, getting right to his side in an instant. Jade, Coco and Velvet, and even the 7ft Yatsuhashi, were having trouble getting people out of the way in contrast.

" _Fox, are you alright?_ " she signed, playing up her concern for the audience.

"I'm good, Ni. I'm good," he groaned. He knew the impact would hurt, but even with his Aura flared up to the max to deal with the impact, he wasn't expecting it to hurt this much, so the groans of pain weren't him playing it up - it genuinely hurt.

" _Can you stand?_ "

"I can, yeah." He shifted slightly to better leaver himself up, resting his arm on his knee, "But since I'm down here..." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the box. Neo feigned sudden surprise, everyone else didn't. Saying that everyone else in that room who knew them low-key lost their shit would be an understatement, but not untrue, especially the pair's teammates, who believed they were going to do this some other time. "Neo, when you came into my life, I didn't know what to say to you. It was rocky, and it was very much unstable ground, but we managed through those rough times and came out the other end stronger. And now that Beacon is behind us, I want more than just the life of a Huntsman in front of me. Orchid Russet, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

Inside the box was a dainty little ring. It was a 9ct White Gold ring adorned with diamonds and tourmalines - a pink gem to match her colour scheme - with many smaller diamonds gracing the side of the ring. On the edge of each side lay 24 of these diamonds, then through the middle of one side of the band alternated between tourmaline pink and diamond white, totalling in ten rubies and nine larger diamonds. There were squeals of glee coming from the odd person around them now, and there were more than a few Scrolls out recording this momentous moment. Meanwhile, Neo stood there in sheer shock. It was happening: the person she loved unconditionally was proposing to her. She had wanted this for ages, more years than she dared to think of, and in thinking back on this happy feeling as genuine tears started pooling in her eyes, she almost missed Fox commenting. ' _They're buying it._ '

' _Seems it,_ ' she replied. ' _This ought to really throw them though._ ' Neo cupped her hands in front of her face, then after a second or two lowered her head, almost in defeat.

"N... Neo?" She sighed silently, then retrieved her necklace and pulled out, showing her own ring for him around the small metal chain on her neck. The ring matched near identically, except his was much larger to fit his finger, a Rose Gold as opposed to White Gold, and in place of the tourmaline gems were spessartite garnets -strong orange coloured gems to match _his_ colour scheme. There were more gasps of anticipation, even a few people commenting on how "awesome this whole scenario is playing out", and when CVY got to the front they were just as shocked as everyone else. Well, all except Yatsuhashi, he may not have been able to get _through_ the crowd, but he was tall enough to see _over_ them all, so he got the gist of what was happening about seven metres back.

Fox stood, holding his ring whilst staring into Neo's beautiful orbs of pink and brown, just as she was standing and looking into his eyes of dark copper. "I take it that means a yes from you?" She nodded, extending out her hand to let him slip the ring on. Just as the jeweller had predicted, it fitted her perfectly.

" _And your answer is?_ " she signed, knowing the answer anyway but wanting it for the videos she spotted being taken around the circle.

Fox answered in both Sign Language and normal speech, in that order, for everyone. "Yes. Yes, I will." As Neo slipped the ring on his finger, the tears in her eyes could stay back any more and the crying came in thick and fast. Not tears of sorrow, obviously, but tears of unadulterated joy. Once both of their hands had their new accessories on them, the pair came together for a long awaited kiss as an engaged couple. The second their lips met, everyone started shouting and cheering for them, and there were more than a few tears from others in the crowd.

* * *

Team CFVYN had been given temporary access to the VIP Room on the upper shelf whilst they had a quick discussion thanks to Romaine pulling a couple of strings with her father. He didn't seem to mind too much, but gave them fifteen minutes only and expected no funny business up there. Coco assured him wholeheartedly that they were merely going up there to discuss away from the prying ears of the rest of their year, a sentiment he understood and appreciated.

"You sly sons of bitches," Coco began, playfully smacking Neo's arm as she said so, "we thought you weren't going to do it tonight!"

"Well, we had planned to do it at the after party for ages, but when you brought it up, we had to improvise our excuses for doing it some other time."

"I've got to admit Fox, you most certainly had us convinced." The engaged couple smiled at Yatsuhashi and the rest of their friends, glad they took the bait for their little misdirection. "But I am confused as to why you felt it necessary to throw yourself over the banister."

"Oh... well..."

" _I told him that if we were going to do it tonight, we might as well make it the centre of attention. What better way than to force everybody to stop and look at us through some spectacular means rather than Fox walking up to the mic and pulling focus that way._ "

"Makes sense," Velvet mused out loud, "but enough on why, let's see them!" It was no big shock that they'd be proposing to one another - although the 'how' most definitely was - considering they told them whilst still at the resort at the start of that academic year, but CVY and Jade had never seen the rings themselves until this moment. Having eliminated the magic of the proposal being a complete mystery to the team, Fox and Neo agreed that the when, the how and the rings would remain completely unknown to anyone outside of the two of them. And seeing the faces of their four closest friends light up when gazing at their engagement rings really nailed it home.

"You are two lucky people," Jade commented, "to have each other." Neo leaned across and hugged the greenette.

"...Neo's saying that things will work out, you just have to believe it will and be patient." He leaned in closer. "She also says that Yatsu may be breaking a little, so you're doing something right." That little aside filled Jade with hope for the future, and with a cheeky glance to the ring on Neo's finger, she accepted the sentiment.

"That can't be the only reason, can it?" Coco asked. "You didn't bring us up here so we can stare at your amazing rings, did you? There's something else."

"Hit the nail on the head Coco. See, I have no experience with this, and Neo's good, but not _that_ good. So, we've been thinking that, as our closest friends, that we'd ask you again to help us with our wedding."

"Yes." The Mates answered without a second to think it through. They had their answer anyway.

"It would be an honour," Yatsuhashi replied, having given it slightly more thought than them. All eyes turned to Jade, who was taken aback by the shift in focus to her.

"Me?"

"Jade, we weren't going to leave you out of this, of course you're invited. Besides, I need _someone_ to keep these three in check." The copper haired boy gestured to his three female teammates, receiving harsh glances in return. He shrugged them off playfully, then focussed again on Jade, awaiting her answer.

"...Alright then, I accept." Neo resumed her hug, shocking an "Eep!" out of the woman from the sudden embrace.

"Now, let's get back to the party. We've got even more reasons to celebrate now!" The hexad of adults nodded in agreement and rose to their feet, making their way back out to the party. The lights were flashing, the music was blaring, and they were going to enjoy themselves to the fullest.

* * *

Not a lot to say, except thank you for the continued support on the story.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	87. The Honour of the Fluffiest Butt

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Magnolia woke to the sound of an alarm clock. They were never fun to wake up to, but this morning it felt especially loud.

' _Was it always this loud?_ ' she asked herself as she reached across to try and silence it. After a few failed attempts of doing it in the dark, she relented and forced her eyes to open so she could see the dastardly noise contraption. One word crossed her mind the moment she did that; ' _Mistake!_ ' The glaring sun was shining right into her eyes at this angle, and she recoiled with disgust like a vampire would when it was struck with daylight. On the second open-eyed attempt, she silenced the machine, but gasped in horror as she read the digits on the digital face:

 **08:06**.

The cafe she worked at opened at 09:00, and there was always at _least_ one patron at the door when the clock struck nine. She threw herself up out of bed and went to go wake Duke up to ask him for a lift to work. Then she remembered: Duke wasn't here anymore.

Duke Azul was Maggie's boyfriend for over two years, and they were such a strong couple in many people's eyes. But Duke had a masterfully hidden side to himself that only Maggie got the "pleasure" of seeing, at least to her knowledge. He wasn't physically abusive, she would have cut him off right away if he was. Or better yet, get Neo, Fox and their team to knock some sense into him before leaving him on the street to think about his actions. Instead, he was mentally taxing to the Faunus. Everything he did was almost always for him, always for his own gains, but it was never obvious, at least not from the start.

He manipulated her so subtly that it took her this long to figure it out. And when she did start piecing it together, he dialled it up to eleven and _then_ started to really hurt her feelings. Ignoring her in the morning; waking up, getting food, washing, preparing for the day and leaving without even uttering a single word to her; refusing to explain what he was doing or why for anything, so she would be guessing and second guessing as to where he was and what he was doing; flat out refusing anything from her by the end. She thought she was in love with him, but by the end the Arctic Fox Faunus was at the end of her proverbial tether and had had enough.

She wanted him out. He wouldn't let it go.

He dragged the whole thing out for months, and in the end, she almost gave in. But her colleagues from the cafe banded together and bought him out of the flat they shared, and the next time she arrived home after that transaction went through, all his stuff (and some of hers) was gone from the flat.

That was three weeks ago, and it still felt empty in the flat. Even with the replenishment of her furniture.

She was glad to be rid of him, she was happier without him - especially given the low level racism he threw her way nearer the end of their time together - but that still didn't take away from the fact that Duke had been a big part of her life for 26 long months, and those memories they shared - the good ones, at least - weren't going to fade into obscurity overnight.

' _Keep moving forward Mags._ ' She pushed herself past the mental wall she was building and got ready for the day.

By the time 8:52 has come around, Magnolia had rocked up to the cafe looking ready for the day, even though she was without her normal "keep me going coffee". But the first half an hour was normally slow, so she could make herself one and keep taking sips from it every time there was a lull in customers to perk her up. At least, that was the theorised plan.

Seeing more than just the average early bird at the entrance shook her up slightly, as there was an entire entourage of people queuing to get in. She hurried around the back and let herself in.

"Morning all," she called out as she entered, hurrying herself to get rid of her thin summer coat as to not make it look like she hadn't seen everyone outside.

"You're getting sloppy, Maggie," the owner Pol semi-joked, "you're usually so punctual."

"Blame it on muscle memory for still thinking I can still get lifts into work every once in a while." The grey bearded man stopped there. He knew Duke was still a sensitive topic with the Arctic Fox Faunus and he would much rather her be late on occasion than not turn up at all.

"Alright, but try and sort it out for the future, alright?" She nodded, a silent thanks for his leniency, and readied herself for the day. It felt like it was going to be a day of smooth sailing and that it would fly by, especially with the influx of customers waiting at the door.

* * *

The day was dragging by, even with the influx of customers at the door at opening time. After the party of fifteen first thing, who were all coming in for some hearty food (clearly, they'd never been to this cafe before) before heading off to watch a tournament in Vacuo that night, there were non-stop customers after that for the next four hours. Their orders were mostly small things like milkshakes or tea cakes or muffins with intermittent larger orders, so it wasn't _too_ bad, but there were enough of the smaller orders for it to become boring to the point of beyond boredom, and she was working in near monotony for the sake of it. Then at 13:08, dead. The customers now in the cafe were mostly solitary people who were sitting on their Scroll with a single cup and occasionally a small bite to eat, passing their Saturday away quietly staring out the windows or at their screens, then leaving as soon as they were done. There were hardly any new customers coming in at all, and the infrequent ones that did come in were approached by others that worked there before she got a chance. Not that Magnolia minded, it just meant there wasn't a lot to do. At least there was time for her to wake up and have an early afternoon tea break to keep her sane. But that confused her even more, as that break flew by despite nothing happening over it in contrast to the slow drag of how the day _had_ been progressing up until that point. It seemed the Gods of Remnant were playing a cruel game today, and she was their unwilling pawn.

At least there was some saving grace to end her torture.

At 16:37, twenty three minutes before she clocked out for the day, she received a message on her Scroll.

 **N - 'Hey x'**

There was a face she hadn't seen in a little while. The Faunus made an excuse to get out of the public eye for a minute or two, then replied to the tri coloured woman.

 **M - 'Hiya hun. Can't talk much, at work. Done in 25 though.'**

A mere moment later, before she even got to the door, her Scroll went again.

 **N - 'No worries, you answered my question :) x'**

Magnolia giggled to herself, sliding her Scroll away and returning inside to deal with the limited number of customers waiting to be served. At least she had a potential something to look forward to in 25 minutes.

The Arctic Fox eventually clocked out at 17:14 after one customer came in at 16:54 and near enough demanded to Pol that he be served by her. She didn't mind, it usually meant another person's worth of tip, and he promised he "wouldn't be too long". Emphasis on the word 'usually'.

He ordered a Large Neapolitan Iced Shake - a cruel reminder to the Faunus that she could potentially be somewhere else right now with someone she actually _wanted_ to spend time with - two blueberry muffins and four pieces of shortbread that he promptly crushed up and sprinkled on top of his milkshake. In all his idiocy for his requests afterwards, that was something worth noting and Maggie jotted it down on her notepad to hand to Pol on clocking out. But after he had ordered he "politely" insisted that she stayed until he was done with his milkshake, just in case he enjoyed it so much that he would like another to take away. He also reminded her, in a less than politically correct way, that she'd be missing out on a tip if she left. Not that she minded missing out on one for this guy, having backtracked on her previous thoughts and would instead let someone else take the tip so that she could leave, and especially after he mentioned it in such a way that was derogatory, calling out her Faunus heritage in a less than stellar light. Her approach to him afterwards was much less amicable after that, and once all was said and done, he left her with a single Lien as a tip.

To say it was not worth her time was the understatement of the day, but she was given that extra 15 minutes as overtime and essentially compensation for the customer's behaviour. As she walked out, handing the owner her little note on the 'shortbread sprinkles' as she noted it down as, she was greeted by a woman waiting on the opposite side of the road in a pastel blue knee length summer dress and a pair of white summer pumps with a small white sling bag. On seeing the Faunus exit the establishment she smiled and got her Scroll out of her little bag.

"Hey there hun. Sorry I'm late, had an ass of a customer at the end." They greeted each other properly with a friendly little peck on the other's cheek.

 **'** **Old looking guy, kind of tall, bit of a beer belly?'**

"That's the one. He was in there making stupid requests, was racist, and only left me 1 Lien tip after having a Large Neo Shake, two muffins and four shortbreads!" Whilst she always found it cute how the Arctic Fox nicknamed the milkshake she so frequently bought in there a 'Neo Shake', the mute furrowed her brow in disgust at the man's actions.

 **'** **What an ass! Did you tell Pol about the racist comments?'**

"Of course, but only after he went. Did you see where he went?"

 **'** **Left'**

"Then we're going right." Neo smiled and followed her taller friend's lead, deliberately putting herself on her left so that her engagement ring was hidden from the Faunus' view. It had been two weeks since the proposal at the after party, and this was the first time the pair had properly seen and caught up with each other since late April / early May, so this was going to be new news for Magnolia.

They walked in relative silence for most of the time, not only because of Neo's inability to be anything but silent but because they always found it easier to walk where they needed to go then have their conversation. It wasn't that they couldn't, they just chose not to. The pair chose to have dinner out in Vale early, something that Neo had pre-warned her team about when she left to see Maggie and said to assume she wasn't eating with them tonight, settling down in a noodle house not too far from Vale's main square. It was one Neo insisted they went to because they had cocktails, a choice the Faunus gladly complied with after the day she'd had.

"So, how's life been treating you Neo?" Maggie began once they were shown to their seats and their drink orders taken.

 **'** **Life's been pretty good recently'**

It was subtle, but Neo kept her left hand under the table.

 **'** **The team all graduated two weeks ago.'**

"Congratulations! You deserve it, after what you had been through before them."

 **'** **Yeah, we really came a long way. We even graduated with S Tier Status'**

"Holy shit," the Faunus stared at her friend in disbelief, "that's incredible Neo. S Tiers are the best of the best, aren't they?" Rather than type out a response, the ice cream girl nodded, a smile on her face. "Wow. And I tapped that." The comment broke Neo's composure and she laughed silently at the suddenness of the statement. Magnolia started laughing too, although she was saddened by the fact she was the only person she heard. It always saddened her, it had for two years.

 **'** **And I tapped that. On that note, how's Duke been recently?'**

The mood shifted on Maggie's side the table noticeably. Her face, bright with smiles a moment ago, suddenly turned sour and dark at the mention of his name. As the drinks were delivered for the pair, a Night and Day cocktail for Neo and a Snow Cap for Maggie, the tri coloured girl shifted uncomfortably in her seat, wanting to say or do something, having known she most likely hit a nerve she wasn't supposed to hit. Neo cocked her head, mouthing her friend's name, the best and only thing she could reasonably do at this point.

"Duke and I split up three weeks ago." Neo's eyes swapped instantly from their usual colours to vanilla white, her right hand covering her mouth as a silent gasp escaped her, her ring finger still hiding the surprise this whole thing had been for out of the Faunus' sight line. Maggie continued before the mute had a chance to type up anything to reply with. "It hasn't been a slow process, nor has it been a healthy one. He... he'd been manipulating me for ages, but it was so discreet that I never realised until recently when I looked back and saw the signs. We'd been arguing quite intensely for the past months, and eventually I called it off, but he wouldn't leave. It took everyone chipping in to do it, but eventually we bought him out of the flat. But when he left, he took some of my shit too, including that framed photo you got me for my birthday last year that I loved of us."

The image in question was taken at Neo's birthday earlier that year. Maggie and Duke had both been invited, although Duke couldn't attend for reasons he, quote, "wasn't going to tell her about, no matter how much she'd ask" - a red flag as to something not being right on second look based solely on wording alone - so the Arctic Fox came along by herself. With it being Neo's party, the rest of Team CFVYN were there too. Neo had her party on one of the beaches on the Northern Anima coastline, and with her birthday being in April it meant the place was practically empty, most people waiting for the warmer Summer months to roll around to enjoy the sand and sea. Velvet volunteered to remain sober so that she could take photos of the evening, as she hadn't been feeling too great that week anyway and didn't want to risk vacating her stomach at the mute's 27th Birthday Party. It wasn't a momentous milestone to be passing, but it was the first birthday she'd be spending with the people she knew she'd be close to for the rest of her life.

When the party started, everyone who was invited was having fun - with the exception of Ruby and Weiss, who were _trying_ to enjoy themselves but were still in that awkward stage of not doing anything regarding their relationship on Jacques Schnee's orders. And when the sun started setting, Neo and Maggie went for a walk along the beach together, just to take a break as the Faunus was feeling a little down not having her boyfriend here with her. Velvet followed and caught the perfect picture of the pair sitting together on a rock formation, both staring out to sea with a glorious setting sun providing natural lighting for the shot and its composition. She didn't show Neo until the day after, and the tri coloured girl loved it so much that she got a copy on her Scroll and got it printed and framed for Maggie to have as a present for her own birthday mid-May.

They both agreed it was a beautiful shot of them, and it was arguably the Faunus' favourite picture of her ever, even though it was only her back and part of her tail visible in the shadows of her back silhouetted against the deep oranges and reds of a setting sun. It looked planned with professional lighting and a set, but the natural setting, lighting and everything made the fact it was 100% natural lighting and scenery all the more amazing.

"He doesn't even need that fucking photo," the magnolia haired Faunus commented with spite in her voice, "he just took it because he knew how much it meant to me and you, he knew how irreplaceable it is." By now, Maggie spoke through gritted teeth in sheer anger at the situation. "I'm just so... angry at what he did to me, and after all this time I'm now seeing what an ass he'd been to me and the lies he was feeding you as well." Neo couldn't stay where she was any longer, risking her friend seeing her surprise early for the sake of comforting her. It didn't cross Neo's mind to illusion the ring out of sight, she had a bigger problem to sort out.

The ice cream girl stood and closed the distance between her and Maggie, wrapping the Arctic Fox Faunus in the tightest hug she could muster. On doing so, it was as if she squeezed the tears out from the woman, for she began quietly sobbing into the smaller woman's shoulder.

"Why didn't I see it sooner?" the fair haired Faunus asked of herself. "Why was I blinded by my feelings to not see that he-" Her ramblings were silenced with a single finger from Neo on her lips. Neo shook her head, then smiled and sat down, getting her Scroll and typing something for Maggie to see, all while the bushy tailed girl sat there in silence, except for the occasional hiccup from trying to keep her crying quiet.

 **'** **Move on. I know it's easier said than done, but you've got your life to live. You can't let one thing get you down. Velvet still has that photo somewhere, so we can replace it with an identical one. Or we can create a new photo to go up there, an even better one. How's that sound? x'**

"Yeah... yeah, that sounds good." Neo grinned, happy her plan worked out. She leaned across and planted a simple kiss on her temple, causing the taller woman to start giggling at the action. "You need to watch out, people will start to think that we're a couple." Neo shrugged, placing another chaste kiss on the girl's cheek, earning more giggles from the Faunus. "Neo, seriously; stop. What would your boyfriend think?"

' _Well, talk about setting up the ball,_ ' she thought to herself. Neo shook her head, grin still adorning her face, and typed up a simple message for Magnolia on her Scroll.

 **'** **He's not my boyfriend anymore, he's my fiancé'**

Maggie had to do not only a double, but a triple take to make sure she was seeing that right, but when she was convinced she was seeing it right she looked up at the mute with anticipation and glee in her carolina blue eyes. Neo's grin grew as she finally showed her friend her left hand, revealing the jewelled ring gracing her fourth finger. It took everything and more for the Faunus not to scream in delight, but that didn't stop the high pitched squeal that pained a couple of her kin in the noodle bar with greater hearing than herself.

"Neo, that's amazing!" she cried, jumping up and hugging the woman. "How? When? Please, enlighten me! I want details, I _need_ details!"

The ice cream girl did just that, explaining to the Faunus in detail everything from the initial discussion herself and Fox had, to her late Uncle Lang's blessing, to the talk with the rest of her team; all of this over two large bowls of noodles and more than a couple of cocktails each.

"So, then what did you do?" Maggie asked, her fourth drink in and slightly tipsy at this point, but still in control enough to not be her usual, all over the place drunk self Neo had seen and subsequently had to deal with on at least two occasions.

 **'** **We played it off as if we wernt but we were'** Neo replied, her not-quite-drunken-yet-definitely-not-sober state making her miss the odd letter or mixing up words every now and again.

 **'** **Both of us hid our rings and I snuck in a unrefined air Dust crystal as well. We were there for a little while before heading up to the top balcony and I threw the Dust at his feet.'**

"Wouldn't that send him flying?"

 **'** **That was the point ;)'  
'He went flying to the floor below and we got everyones attention as a result'**

"Wait," she clarified, taking a sip of her drink as she kept the silence going for a little longer, "so you actively drew attention to the proposal, doing it in front of the entirety of the attending people from your year?" Neo nodded. "Why? Why not do it intimately?"

 **'** **Coco, Yatsu and Velvet all already knew we were going to propose at some point in the future. We wanted to surprise them, and we to have some fun as well. Plus, everyone in our year is going to remember when Fox and I got engaged at the graduation party.'**

The Faunus rolled her eyes, failing to keep a grin off her face. "Of course, that makes sense. I don't know why I put it past the two of you to do something outlandish like this."

 **'** **Well, the wedding itself is going to be a lot less so. We don't want anything too crazy'**

"Right, so the over the top proposal was to balance out the calm wedding. I got ya."

 **'** **But I need some help with it'**

"Like what?"

 **'** **Well,** **somebody** **needs to be my maid of honour. I can't ask by brother Vinnie because he doesn't have the form for a dress. None of the teams in years below are that close to us, apart from Team HLQN, but I want them as guests. And Coco and Velvet have their own plans for that day, so I can't ask them either, lest ruin their moment in the spotlight that day, whenever it will be - I haven't decided yet'**

The gears were working overtime in Maggie's head, trying to suss out what Neo was insinuating. The mute beat her to the punch, handing over her Scroll one last time.

 **'** **What I'm asking Mags is would you please be the Maid of Honour at my wedding?'**

The tri coloured girl wasn't prepared for a Faunus to come flying at her for an overzealous hug, yet here they were; Neo now lying on the floor having been thoroughly jumped by her bushy tailed friend.

"Neo, it would mean the world to me. Thank you." Maggie looked up, then realised that they weren't in the comfort of her flat or in a room of any kind with even an iota of privacy, therefore there were a lot of people watching as two women were lying on the floor in a slightly compromising position. The Faunus sped back to her seat in record time, her face a stronger pink than part of Neo's cocktail. "Sorry." Neo brushed it off.

 **'** **You were excited, you get to do that'**

The pair giggled at her reaction, one silently, and enjoyed the rest of their evening together. They parted ways over an hour after Neo's request for Maggie to be her Maid of Honour, the Faunus heading back to her flat much happier than when she left it earlier that morning, whilst Neo returned to their dorm at Beacon, all whilst it was still light out despite being 20:01. The team were still in the market for a shared accommodation that would be able to house all five of them together, but for the time being they had another four weeks at Beacon. That time was being used to find somewhere before they were kicked out of the room for good by the teachers - most likely Goodwitch - to make way for new students in September, and as such they would have to set up shop at one of their parents' house; it was an option they didn't want to utilise, but it was there in case.

"Evening hun," came the copper haired boy's greeting as Neo walked through the door, he and everyone else sat on their respective beds, "how'd it go?"

" _Fantastic. She agreed, so we'll need to include her onto the list of people we'll need to invite. That just lea-_ "

"Can it, Shortcake." Neo glared at her team leader, disapprovingly. Normally, the nickname was fine. Now, not so much; although she had no idea why that urge to react negatively suddenly came to be. "I saw that list ready to spill out just there. You're thinking too far ahead; and yes, that's a thing you can do." The mute didn't appreciate the obvious being stated to her, especially now when she was mildly inebriated from her cocktails, choosing to pull a face that said, 'do you think I didn't know that?' "Take some time to let the action settle before jumping to the next one. _We_ need to go over colours, venue, time and date together, and that's not a job for 20:20 at night." Neo's shoulders sagged, sighing in defeat.

"I know you want things to go right Neo, and we want them to go right for you and Fox too, but over-preparing is almost as bad as under-preparing." Velvet said, furthering her Mate's comment.

"Velvet and Coco are right Neo," the group's tank added, "and we have other things we need to focus on first. Whilst I am happy we have your Maid of Honour, we need to prioritise getting out of this room and finding a place for us to live - long term or otherwise." Neo's resolve crumbled with every word spoken, realising how selfish she was being.

"Listen Ni, we're not going to stop you from getting married. Why would we? We just need to take our time getting our collective lives sorted first. It'll be easier to plan the wedding knowing how much we have in the CFVY Pot to spend, as opposed to spending it all and then having to go back to our parents' houses." The tri coloured girl nodded slowly. "Neo." She looked at him, and saw him extending his arms out to offer her a hug. She accepted, falling into his arms and melting slightly into the embrace. ' _We're going to get married. I don't want us to rush, I want it to be the best day of our lives._ '

' _I get it..._ ' she admitted, ' _it_ _ **may**_ _be the four Night and Days I had talking and wanting this to fly by, so I think I'll sleep them off and I'll get back to you tomorrow._ '

' _Yeah, sounds good. Get some rest, and we'll talk tomorrow. I love you Neo. You know that, right?_ '

' _Of course, you wally. I love you too._ ' She leaned up to press her lips to his, then stood and wandered to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When she'd gotten changed and came back the four hadn't moved much. Fox was sitting less central in his bed, the other couple had shuffled marginally and Yatsuhashi, naturally, hadn't budged an inch. The only major difference was that all the lights had been dimmed so that Neo could get some rest should she so wish it, a gesture she much appreciated from her team. She lay in bed and dosed off within a few minutes, surrounded by her closest friends and her fiancé.

She'd done this 19 times now since Fox proposed - falling asleep next to her fiancé, that is - but she couldn't help but feel completely satisfied at the thought of her life coming together so perfectly in the end.

* * *

So, d'y'all remember way, way, _WAAAY_ back in Chapter 15 where I introduced the Arctic Fox Faunus? Well, it was a long time coming, but I properly reintegrated her into the story. Not just as a one off character, not just as a fleeting mention later down the line, but Magnolia "Maggie" Frio is here to stay, and she's playing a big role from here on out, mostly because I love her and regret leaving her to the tresses of time and the early chapters.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	88. The Best Day of Their Lives

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Fox woke up alone in bed.

That, for once, was a good thing. It meant nothing had happened last night. Or if it did, nothing went further than... wherever they went. He couldn't remember exactly. That simultaneously was and wasn't the best idea they'd ever had, and funnily enough, they had Oakley Russet and Cyprus Alistair to thank for that. The whole excursion the night prior was their final act as "Fathers of Unmarried Children", so they brought all the boys in attendance a couple of rounds each at the bar.

It was their way of bidding farewell to their final night as friends brought together by their daughter and oldest son respectively, and welcoming in the new life tomorrow as relatives, connected through the marriage of Fox and Neo this afternoon.

Oakley and Cyprus each had a fair few drinks last night, even finishing off the ones that others didn't. Yatsuhashi kept up with them both, but being nearly a foot taller and much beefier than everybody there meant that the same volume of alcohol that rendered the two Fathers worse for wear when they called it a night only left him with a minor wobble of the horizon and a tickly nose. He couldn't be too drunk or be hungover either, what with being the Best Man and all, or else there was no guarantee that the day would go smoothly on their end. He had tremendous faith in Fox, given that he had the least to drink out of everyone, but Yatsuhashi would never let this day go horribly for him, else he'd have two bridesmaids and a bride to contend with, and the man knew that he'd lose against them.

Neo's brother Vinnie had joined them too, having been given temporary leave from his duties as an Atlas Huntsman to attend the wedding; he'd managed to secure getting the day before, the day of and the day after the wedding off as leave before having to return by mid-afternoon on the day after that. It was a generous amount of time, and one he was thankful for. Because he didn't need to return to Atlas until two days after the wedding day, Vinnie had far more to drink last night than he usually would. He let himself cut loose a little bit; considering he didn't have high-ranking officials breathing down his neck at every bar on site and in the immediate working province of the Kingdom, he was thankful. But as arguably the biggest lightweight in that bachelor group last night, his hangover would be the worst of everyone.

At least, for the guys. He had no idea what Neo's half of the wedding party were like this morning.

The reality of it all suddenly hit Fox harder than last night's alcohol did on that thought - he was getting married today!

The months that had passed since the proposal seemed to have flown by, but now here he was. In their initial planning stages, the team collectively agreed that they would aim for a mid to late February wedding, that way they still might get the latter half of the winter snow or even the early parts of spring blossom to colour their wedding day. Also, it meant that their guests - including other student teams from Beacon - could take some time away during their mid-semester break. And while the prices for everything would still be high, they wouldn't be as extortionate as they would be in the Valentine's Day wedding boom the weeks prior. That gave them six months - give or take a week - to plan the event and get everything in order. Because of their effectiveness as a team, the entire thing was all arranged by the time the New Year had rolled around, except for finalising the suits for Fox, Yatsuhashi and the rest of the male wedding party.

That was being done once January was well underway though, and sure enough, they had everything fitted and ready three days before Valentine's Day.

Neo's party and Fox's party both split off from one another two days ago in preparation for the big day.

Neo's party consisted of herself, Maid of Honour Maggie, Bridesmaids Velvet, Jade and Coco, the two Mothers of - Yubae Russet and Inbar Alistair - and one of the page boys Fenneck Alistair, Fox's youngest brother.

Fox's consisted of those previously mentioned, and Vulpé Alistair - the middle of the Alistair siblings who was older than his younger brother of 11 by five years. Vulpé did not join the adults for drinks that evening, instead remaining in the hotel room they'd got for him and told him to order room service for his dinner and to go to sleep when he felt like it, so long as it was before they got back.

The soon-to-be-married couple had planned that they had to be away from each other for the week of the wedding due to their ability to hear the other's thoughts, but as Maggie and Yatsuhashi both pointed out, they couldn't reasonably do that, so they settled on two days before the wedding. It was agreed that they'd stay at someone else's house on the first night, then the night before the wedding each party would go to separate hotels, with Neo and her group getting one closer to the venue because of her dress and whatnot, so that there were no accidental run-ins in the days immediately prior. It also meant that if anyone had left anything at a house, they could return there without the worry of walking in when one of the others were there.

Everything had gone off without a hitch, and the day was upon them.

Fox rolled out of bed and eyed the digital clock that stared back at him from his Scroll screen. He was comforted by the sweet sight of 9:26, meaning he'd still managed to get a decent night's sleep without waking up far too early or late. The only downside was that he now only had 33 minutes to get downstairs for breakfast before they closed that off to make way for the regular meals for the day, and right now he was craving for a good breakfast.

The copper haired man dressed in his casual wear from last night and headed down, thinking he'd be one of the last, if not the very last, from his wedding party up considering the time they let him sleep in to. When he got down to the restaurant, sure enough, he saw all five of them sitting down around a single table merrily eating away at their morning food.

"The man of the day arrives!" Cyprus declared as he spotted his son approaching.

"I don't need to be reminded Dad, and can you not yell that out in front of everyone here please?"

"What's wrong Fox," Vulpé taunted, "upset that Daddy's embarrassing you in front of all these strangers?"

"No, I'm crying for you."

The retort brought the youngest Alistair there to come out of his taunting mood, swapping to curiosity on a dime. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. I'm sad that I get the privilege of having my Dad embarrass me in public; you just need to go outside to do that yourself." The two Russets laughed under their breaths, and the Alistair patriarch smiled. Vulpé wasn't as impressed.

"Fox, I thought you were older and more mature than that," Yatsuhashi commented with folded arms, "why must you resort to childish taunting to win your argument?"

"Relax Yatsu; it's just a bit of sibling rivalry, I don't mean it really."

"I did..." Vulpé muttered.

The tank sighed. "I just want you to enjoy your day, and as such, I'd like the least amount of quarrelling so that there's no untimely death of a certain groom the day of his wedding."

"You worry too much Yatsuhashi, you need to relax a little." Oakley rested a hand on the taller young man's shoulder. "Besides, isn't it the job of the bride and groom to be nervous for the day ahead, rather than you?"

"I am not normally like this, Fox can attest to that."

"It's true."

"No, I worry because a certain heterochromatic bride-to-be has personally threatened me, stating that if anything happened to him between us leaving the house two days ago and this afternoon, she would personally see to it that each of us suffers a slow and agonising death. And she's starting with me." At once, the group were silenced. "I wouldn't put it past her to follow through on that threat either."

"But I haven't done anything," Vulpé fired off instantly, almost like a natural response to something going wrong around him.

"Correct me if I'm wrong Vulp, but weren't you just arguing with me?" The 16 year old hushed himself completely, not wishing to make his situation any worse. "Now, I'm going to grab myself some breakfast, and then we're going back to our rooms and getting ourselves ready."

* * *

Oakley pulled up in the car first, with Cyprus coming in after him. The venue was decently sized, a secluded little hall on the far side of Anima that was seemingly purpose-built for weddings. The grounds surrounding it were adorned with various trees blooming into life on this late February afternoon, their leaves or blossoms in full force by the time they'd arrived. Off to one side, there was a stream that flowed across the landscape, travelling on past their line of sight, but Fox knew from booking this place that it leads to a picturesque lake about half a mile downstream. The building itself was large enough for their congregation today, along with the room for the bride to wait patiently away from all prying eyes. Yatsuhashi even spotted their gazebo for afterwards, if this place was beautiful enough and spacious enough for both the ceremony and the reception - which it was - then why waste it?

Yatsuhashi, being the eyes for the groom, also spotted the cars the bride and bridesmaids arrived in on the opposite side of the hall, tucked away so that there was plenty of room for guests. Speaking of which...

As the groom's party left their cars, they spotted four of their guests already waiting outside.

"You realise _we're_ supposed to be here first, right? That's kind of the whole point; it's my wedding." Fox wore a slim charcoal grey three-piece suit, as did the rest of his party. The lapels were peaked in design with a fine top-stitching that ran along the rim of lapel in a slightly lighter colour than the suit itself. The top pocket of the jacket and the pockets of the waistcoat all had a slight colour difference to them, leaning more towards a standard grey rather than charcoal. Neo's friends at the fabric place were given the suits as soon as they were collected from the menswear store they got them from and, on Neo's request, changed the buttonhole colour to a bronze thread. This made it stand out much more, and tied in with their colour theme for the wedding, that being 'Caramel/Champagne'. The outfit was brought together with a white herringbone patterned shirt, some golden cufflinks, a caramel satin tie and a crisp white pocket hankie.

There were a few differences in a couple of people's attire, mostly the Groom and Best Man. For example, Yatsuhashi wore very specific novelty cufflinks that he, Coco and Velvet bought. The three of them searched on their Scroll one day when the engaged couple were off looking at venues for the wedding, and they came across these pins that were all coffee related. Naturally, Coco spent her money instantly on them for herself and her Life Mate to wear on their bridesmaid dresses, then searched around a little more and found that the company who created them also made that set in cufflink form. They were currently wearing their own coffee-related accessories, but nothing compared to what they found for the happy couple.

After the trio found their things and had them delivered (they got them sent to Team RWBY's dorm so that there was no questioning from Fox and/or Neo) they ran into a problem; what would they do for the big two to make them stand out? So, they searched and found nothing of interest for a very long time, but Yatsuhashi stumbled upon some more novelty cufflinks that were shaped like bowls of ice cream, albeit completely raw metallic in colour.

Fortunately, they happened to know someone who was really enthusiastic about weapons, forging and, most importantly, metalwork.

Ruby used her vast knowledge to add a layer of metallic automotive paint in a very subtle pink to get a base layer for the metal. Using some alcohol inks she found in the necessary colours, she finished it off and made them stand out with their vibrancy.

She creating ivory using mostly white and yellow, strawberry pink using the pink on offer remixed with white, and a brown from just using the brown ink, but mixed slightly with a yellow to produce a lighter more golden brown. Ruby honestly enjoyed the challenge and the time away from missions doing something other than twiddling her thumbs waiting for the next one.

Fox also had a slight difference in the waistcoat from the rest of his party, opting for an ivory one with a subtle, but still noticeable, striped pattern down it to set him further apart from the crowd.

"Well, if you're showing up after guests, that means your late to your own wedding; what's that saying about you to your future missus?" Yang shot back with a smirk.

"It's saying that I should have picked better guests." The two brawlers smiled at one another, hugging briefly. Yang was wearing a two piece formal navy shadow stripe ladies' suit, much to the initial dismay - but eventual acceptance of - from a certain ex-Heiress. So she didn't look too much like she was part of the wedding party, she had a lilac shirt on with a plum coloured tie on and some smartly polished black dress shoes. To add to the look, she also wore a golden pocket square, a colour scheme her Mate matched. "It's good to see you all made it. You all look amazing."

"Thanks, Fox. We wouldn't have missed it for anything," came Blake's reply. Her outfit complemented her Mate's one, a deep plum coloured shoulder maxi dress that had a faint abstract pattern at the bottom in a more prominent royal blue, the purple being the inspiration for Yang's neckwear colour as the blonde knew that matching a tie to a dress is more straightforward than the other way around. The dress rested high on her left shoulder and dropped down to shin level, the parting almost at the front, slightly favouring the right side. She accessorised with a much more pronounced blue handbag, golden eye shadow and a golden bow in her hair (but not covering her ears - it felt a little weird to her, putting a bow back on her head after she'd had her bow off for a while now) to match Yang's gold coloured accessory. All of this rounded up with some plain black heels that brought her to just above Yang's height, not that the brawler was complaining much.

"Seriously though, we _couldn't_ have missed it," added their team leader, "Weiss was up and ordering us around at six in the morning. It's not like it takes long to get here."

"I was only being prepared. Besides, your sister was insistent on taking her motorcycle here, so we needed transportation. And I was not willing to get into your Dad's car with this on, as generous as Taiyang's offer was."

Weiss and Ruby's outfits weren't as coordinated and complementary as their teammates' were. They both had dresses on, but Weiss' was a mid-length ghost white number that faded into a duck egg green at the hems and a similar ghost white coloured jacket with a rich crimson lining. The look was very much akin to her combat attire at Beacon in look and design, only this time without the Schnee Crest anywhere one her physical attire. She also wore white high heels, her hair in its signature ponytail off to one side, and her apple pendant necklace that never left her. Only this time, she also wore a second pendant on the chain - a simple rose, gifted to her by her girlfriend on the first anniversary of them officially being together - a date they decided was their first kiss back when Neo attacked, and Ruby was sent to the Infirmary with a dislocated arm.

Speaking of Ruby, the younger team leader's dress was a rosewood coloured sleeveless dress that fell to knee length with a near-transparent mesh at the top in a similar vein as her partner's prom dress back in their first year at Beacon. Because it was much colder now than it was back then, Ruby wore a pair of tights that complimented the colour of her dress, her signature ruby red hood and some strong red pumps, much to her relief. She hated heels, and after a while, her team eventually gave up on trying to get her to wear them. But Weiss did manage to get her to wear a pair of earrings for the wedding, even though the now-adult had never worn them before.

Weiss gave her a pair of snowflake earrings, a gift that matched Ruby's rose pendant for her. But these were not Schnee snowflakes; they were simple, run of the mill snowflakes with tiny diamonds in the centre. Ruby commented on how they seemed like they'd cost a lot, what with the diamonds and all, but Weiss promised she didn't spend lots on them. She was lying, of course, but the thought was there.

"Regardless," Fox said, walking towards the main entrance of the hall with his wedding party and Team RWBY in tow, "you're all here now, and that's what we all wanted. It just means you've got more waiting around than you probably would have had if you'd turned up on time rather than ridiculously early." He said that last part in jest, and for the most part, RWBY took it as such. The only real exception to that being Weiss (naturally), but he was greeted more with a roll of the eyes, a soft sigh and a smirk as opposed to the utter grilling he might have received three and a half years ago when she first started, and on a day like today he was thankful for such a luxury.

"Nervous?" Blake asked.

"Like you wouldn't believe!" he spouted out before he even gave his mind a chance to register the question. In all fairness, it wasn't wrong when it made him say that. "I'm getting married. I probably won't realise I've done this until next week maybe. It's just... all so amazingly scary that this is happening right now."

Yang rested her hand on his shoulder. "You've got this Fox. I have no idea how you five managed to pull everything off you did when at Beacon, but this is a testament to the fact you made it here and did great doing so. I mean, I thought _our_ lives there were crazy as shit, but clearly, we were getting second fiddle to your insanity."

"And you three as well; writing and publishing a book in the space of a few months while still at Beacon is a feat we could never have done. You can't give us all the credit for doing outlandish things."

"Um, Fox," Ruby started shyly, but eventually built up to her usual self over the course of the sentence, "you fought a weird rubbery armed Grimm than no one had fought and survived before, and survived it nearly unscathed; you battled a squid monster Grimm that could control people's minds and came out with a win; you fought off a giant swarm of Lancers without anyone being majorly hurt-"

' _They're called "Fuck-No's"..._ ' he commented to himself.

"-and to do all of that and come out as S Tiers; how can we _not_ give you all the credit?!"

"Rubes' got a point, Fox," Blake commented, Yang's pet nickname for her sister one of the things that had seeped through over the past few years ever since they'd Mated, "we have a _Schnee_ on our team, and we don't think we can hope to hit anything greater than an A Tier. You'd also think you have the slight disadvantage of having five members as opposed to four; but honestly, if Neo weren't so insistent on striving to do her best and not bring you down, it would have been one. Instead, she's been an asset to you no end."

"And soon she's going to be your wife! Oh, this is so exciting!" Ruby cried in glee, bouncing up and down as she had done plenty of times before whenever she got too enthusiastic. Fox, along with the rest of Ruby's team, just laughed it off, and when she came down from that little high, she was embarrassed initially but laughed it off too.

"Anyway, you four head inside, mingle around while everybody else gets here; we'll finish getting prepped up and join you at the ceremony."

"Sounds like a plan. We'll be there supporting you all the way." Yang flashed a smile at the groom and started heading inside, the rest of the team bidding their goodbyes and following suit.

* * *

The final hour ticked by, at which point more and more of the guests began filing into the hall, and Fox was - for lack of a better phrase - bricking it.

"Everything will be okay Fox," his Best Man assured him, "we've gone over this."

"It's actually happening this time though Yatsu," he responded, slight panic in his voice. "In 30 minutes, Orchid _Alistair_ will be walking out of here."

"And I am very happy for you that this is happening."

"...I'm panicking."

"Fox..."

"Was this a good idea? I hope it was a good id-"

"Fox!" Firm hands grabbed his shoulders, halting his rambling immediately. "Yourself and Neo have nothing to worry about, everything will work out, and once it gets underway, you'll remember this day for the rest of your lives." His expression hardened. "But you can't do that if you panic yourself into a mess. So, stop it!" A deep booming voice demanding you do something right in your ear is a pretty easy way to make sure it's done, and that was indeed the case here. The Groom's panicking was silenced, and a calm took over in its presence.

"Thanks, Big Guy." Fox peered out of the door he and Yatsuhashi were behind, obscured from the view of the guests until the ceremony began properly, and saw that everybody that had been invited was there. "Looks like this is it."

"Are you ready Fox?"

"Still no," he answered as he opened the door and walked out to the central part of the hall. The crowd took to their seats the moment they noticed him, conversations fizzling out into nothing as the ceremony began. But unlike tradition, Fox instead sat down immediately on the side where the Bridesmaids would typically be sat, with Yatsuhashi taking his rightful place on the Groom's side of the hall. In truth, there was no 'Bride's side' or 'Groom's side' in the traditional sense; it was just where the Groomsmen and Bridesmaids were sat. Everyone else was encouraged to sit wherever they wanted to.

Neo also entered from the opposite side of the hall, sitting down in between Yatsuhashi and her father, and that's what caused a lot of hushed whispers to start spreading through the crowd. She looked completely different, far more of a change than anyone else had ever really seen from her, ever since her costume disguises. Using her Illusions, the mute had made it appear as if she was wearing a pearl pink sundress with spaghetti straps, a white belt, some white pumps and a thin pink clutch bag. What was more striking was the fact she had seemingly grown a couple of extra inches, she'd changed her hair so that it was entirely strawberry blonde, and her eyes were a piercing sea blue. If it weren't for the fact most of the Groomsmen on Fox's side and all of Neo's Bridesmaids knew, everyone would have been confused as to why this person was sitting where she was at a time like this.

In all honesty, it was to add to the surprise of later when the big reveal came to light.

When she was seated - with a quick turn to Yatsuhashi, her eyes flittering to their usual colours and a wink before they swapped back to blue - Yatsuhashi nodded and gave the signal. On cue, Velvet and Coco walked down the aisle in their Bridesmaid dresses, hand in hand, straight up to the altar. The dresses were shin length A-Line Chiffon dresses in a champagne colour with a scoop neckline and a high waist strap in a similar hue as the dress. There were also ruffle flowers on the waist strap; while Jade and the 'Mothers Of' had champagne flowers, Coco and Velvet had coffee brown flowers and Maggie had pearl pink flowers as the Maid of Honour. They were the only other bits of major colour difference in the outfits for the girls, as everything else stuck with the Caramel/Champagne colour scheme. The two Mates' shoulders were exposed in these dresses, revealing their matching Mate Marks. They'd been completed in the weeks after the proposal, binding the two of them for life. Rather than before, where it was two individual emblems that blended into one, now Velvet's Heart and Coco's Cross-Hairs truly became one, combining the two into a unique single image on their bodies. Around their necks, they each bore a simple chain with a simple golden ring on it - their Partner's ring.

"Apologies for high jacking the wedding guys," Coco said to the crowd, arguably not in the least bit sorry, "but we had always planned to do this." The comment earned a polite laugh from the crowd.

"As you may be aware," the priest began, "Faunus relationships and partnerships are much different to our own. These two are, by law, already bound together and are married in all legal senses due to their Mating. However, when discussing the arrangement for this wedding, this was one thing these two fine women in front of me wished to take place, as did the Bride and Groom, in case you were wondering. They wished merely to present each other with their rings in front of witnesses so that all, not just the Faunus, could recognise their status as an official married couple. So, with that in mind; Coco Adel, your ring for Ms. Scarlatina."

"Velvet, I never knew what a joy this would be. Becoming your Mate is something I shall never regret as long as we live, and these rings are only here to symbolise it. You know how I feel, and I want to spend every day feeling like this." The softer eyes of Velvet were already watery, but Coco remained strong(er) by keeping them at bay a little while. The ring slid onto the Faunus' finger perfectly, the pair having been fitted when Fox and Neo went to get theirs done.

"And Velvet Scarlatina, if you would like to present Ms. Adel with your ring for her."

"Coco. What more can I say that my Mark or I haven't already said before? I love you with everything I have. I love you for everything you do. Some places will hate and discriminate against us because it is a Faunus and a Human, or two women, or something else. I don't care anymore. I used to, but you changed that; I love you for that and so much more." As the rings were slipped on, the pair held hands as the final part was said. Velvet's camera flashed as Jade had been entrusted with the photography duties until such a time as they were in the reception.

"In the eyes of the Maidens and the Gods, I pronounce this couple married. Congratulations to Mrs. and Mrs. Scarlatina!" Applause from the crowd burst forward as the pair kissed. Technically they've been 'married' for months now, and this was just the official part. But having this happen to them - the room full of people clapping for them - was so emotional that both of them started to tear up. Blake and Yang's excessive cheering for them turned those tears into laughter as they walked down the aisle again, hand in hand, officially married. Coco spotted Dolly and her Father, Rodney Adel, in the crowd and smiled at them as she passed. They reached the main door, but stopped and split apart, Coco going right, and Velvet left. As they did that, Fox made his way to the stage and stood to wait for the main event.

Neo waited a couple of seconds before standing up with her Father by her side. They walked separately up to the door, Neo going through first and Oakley following a second afterwards.

' _This is it: the big moment._ ' Fox grinned at the distant voice of his soon-to-be wife in his head through the wall.

Music started playing, and everyone stood.

Neo and Oakley stepped around the corner they'd hidden behind, arms linked together. The smile on Oakley's face showed how proud he was of his daughter at this moment. Neo still was in her disguised outfit, but as she started walking, she slowly began to shed the illusion she'd cast over herself, and she let her real wedding dress been seen for the first time; herself, Bridesmaids and Maid of Honour notwithstanding.

Her sundress became a much longer white wedding dress with a fit and flare style skirt and an ombré at the bottom that turned to a pronounced cream colour at its base. The spaghetti straps faded away completely, as did the square neckline, both replaced instead with a semi-sweetheart neckline that left the mute's collar and uppermost cleavage exposed tastefully. Her bodice had a boning style, replacing the belt from before yet still keeping the shape of the body it showed from earlier. Her strawberry blonde hair changed to it's much more recognisable pink and brown, only this time it was in a braided bun at the back of her head that alternated in colour with every braid. After that appeared, her simple veil materialised as well, covering her face and with very little train - and what was there didn't even reach the floor. Her pumps disappeared, instead becoming a pair of elegant white heels, explaining her sudden height gain. And lastly, her clutch bag became a bouquet of cream coloured roses and white orchids.

Gasps and utterances of amazement were heard for the entirety of the walk up to the altar, even over the music.

When Oakley gave his daughter away to Fox, it was unmistakable that his eyes were watering. The copper haired boy simply nodded as a sign of his gratitude. Oakley responded in the same fashion before taking his seat.

' _I know you wanted that to be your Uncle Lang,_ ' Fox mentioned to her as he removed her veil, ' _but I know he's watching down and smiling on this day. He'll still be here._ ' Neo smiled, her own eyes faltering and tearing up. As the congregation sat down, the ceremony began.

Everything ran smoothly, the initial part over and done with in what seemed like a blink of an eye. But when Fenneck presented them with their rings, and the vows began, that is when time seemingly slowed to a complete crawl.

"Orchid Russet, would you like to present your ring to Mr. Alistair?" Naturally, she couldn't place the ring on his finger while simultaneously speaking - at least, not out loud she couldn't - so she slipped the band on his finger and then signed her vows.

" _There was a large portion of my life that I regret. But if given a chance, I would not change it. In doing so, I never may have found you, or if I did the circumstances would have been different, and we may never have met as we did. The Gods seemed to have wanted us together Fox, and I am proud to see that they did. I love you like I have loved no other, and I doubt I ever will love another._ " Fox had learnt Sign Language to communicate with his team and girlfriend from near enough the moment he gained his vision. But in moments like this, Neo spoke to him in his head too, letting him hear the words she had to say to him.

"And Fox Alistair, Ms. Russet's ring, if you wouldn't mind."

"Orchid. You were persistent the second time we truly interacted. The first time was... less than stellar - you threw a Nevermore at me. After that, it was months before I spoke to you again, but you had been around that entire time. Honestly, I knew you were special then, but on that first date we went on, something clicked. And things have been clicking ever since. I have loved every moment we've had because they have made us stronger, and from now on we will grow together as a true family." His wedding ring for her, much like hers for him, was a simple stainless steel ring that had, after casting, been heated slightly and had a brass wire wheel cast over it to give it a slight golden colour. Inside each of the rings though was a different colour - Fox's was orange and Neo's was an intense pink colour.

"By the power invested in me," the priest began, bringing some members of the congregation to attention as they had slightly slouched over time, "and in the eyes of the Gods and Maidens, I now pronounce you Man and Wife. Huge congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs Alistair!" The man leaned down slightly towards Fox, lowering his voice. "You may kiss if you so want to."

' _Don't need to tell me twice,_ ' Neo silently insisted as she leaned in and initiated the kiss, everyone in the crowd clapping and cheering for the pair of them even louder and longer than they did with Velvet and Coco, much to the latter of the two's silent and fleeting trivial annoyance. The Mate's followed after the husband and wife to the registry so that they could be recognised as married couples by the Kingdoms.

* * *

"Here they come!" came the call from the crowd as they heard faint footsteps approaching the door. Naturally, it was one of the Faunus with acute hearing, but Blake knew when her hearing would come in handy. Neo and Velvet smiled at that from the other side of the door.

"You three ready to go out there and face the crowd?" their leader asked. Fox and Neo linked hands, then nodded at the fashionista, whose beret and sunglasses were missing at present; rest assured, she told everyone they'd be back on her for the reception afterwards.

Velvet took her Mate's hand as well. "I'm ready too."

"Well then, let the Bride and Groom go first, we'll follow after."

"Nuh uh," Fox replied with a shake of his head, a gesture Neo mirrored.

"...What do you mean 'nuh uh'?"

"Exactly that Coco." The caramel haired girl wasn't sure what to say or think regarding the matter, but whatever it was she wasn't too pleased she was feeling it.

 _Trust._

Brown eyes turned to meet their likeness as Coco registered her partner's emotion. "Why would they do anything with ill content on a day like today?" She leaned up and pecked the unsuspecting gunner on the lips with a smile. "Don't answer; you'll only embarrass yourself." The human Mate raised an eyebrow with a smirk at the Rabbit's quip.

"This is _our_ day; as in all four of us, not exclusively mine and Neo's. It's the day all four of us got married to the person we love and care for the most, and so we're going to leave here and soak up the glory as a team." Neo reached across as her now-husband spoke, grabbing hold of her hand and not letting go, linking the four of them together. As you looked at them, Fox was on the far left, then Neo next to him, Coco following that and Velvet finishing out the line on the far right hand side of the line. The symmetry was pretty perfect, as the two 'Brides' were situated in the middle of the two 'Grooms' of the day. "You ready?"

The fashionista smiled. "Yeah, I am."

With a nod from them, Fox and Velvet each pushed one of the double doors at the front of the building open onto a crowd of people lining the way forward. Organ music was playing in the background as everyone cheered and threw confetti in their general direction. The quartet walked down hand in hand, with the two 'Brides' opting to keep their hands together, yet also showed that they were merely holding on to support their close friend in their time in the overwhelming spotlight of the walkway. Cameras flashed, clapping rang out, and cries of hooray were heard as the four made their way to the end of the line of guests. Coco pried her hand out of Neo's and let them walk forward further without them, if only for a couple of steps before they inevitably stopped and stared at the less traditional of the two couples.

" _Coco, what are you doing?_ " the ice cream girl queried.

"Yes, we wanted this day to be about all of us, but in the end, you two are in the proper attire for it; it's your day with a side of us, so enjoy the limelight damn it!" For someone who liked to be a more compassionate and understanding leader, Coco still had her moments of firmness and aggression when it came to orders. Fox let out a small chuckle at that before continuing on the path towards the reception area, Neo hand interlocked with his own, her fingers absentmindedly stroking across the smooth service of his new accessory piece. The new Mates followed after the Bride and Groom, the Best Man and Maid of Honour following after them joined by Jade, then the rest of the wedding party and finally the guests started moving with them towards the gazebo a little walk away.

What many people failed to spot though was a new black car pulling up behind everyone else and for three occupants to get out and silently make their way to the back of the group.

* * *

 **"I am captain of a... ship. And, being a captain of a ship, I could in fact perform a... marr-i-age. Right here. Right in the story. Right... now."**  
Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean.

I promise, I did not plan this. The fact I'm uploading the chapter they're getting married in on Valentine's Day was purely coincidental. I'm not going to knock the coincidence though; the ultimate expression of love on the day of love? Why not? That said, I feel the above quote is very much appropriate. Not only am I the captain of this ship, I am near enough the soul crew member of it. I might as well get myself a dinghy. At least it's a good dinghy.

There's still another chapter after this at the wedding - this is 6.5k words already, but I wanted this part to be the main part. Next week, y'all're getting the Reception afterwards. Plus, some unexpected guests.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	89. To Different and Exciting New Lives

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Despite looking fairly cramped from the outside, once everyone was in the wedding gazebo, they realised how spacious it all really was. How they had planned the seating was that all the tables would be situated around the outside of the giant tent with plenty of room behind each person for getting in and out of their seats. The main couple sat at the far end of the table, with the Maid of Honour, then his Groomsmen to Fox's left, and the Best Man and Bridesmaids on Neo's right. From there, everyone worked their way around the interconnecting tables until they reached the end where there was a large space in the middle with a two tables width gap at the end, plenty of room for people to move into and start dancing and mingling once the food was done. Everyone was getting settled down and ready for the meal, but as everybody was Neo just so happened to glance upwards towards the entrance of their tent and spotted someone outside waiting. She got up, confusing the party.

"What's up hun?" Fox asked of her.

Avoiding the answer, Neo turned to him. ' _I'm only going to be outside, alright? There's someone I promised to meet._ ' With that, the Bride grabbed her Scroll, believing she knew who was out there before she shattered into pieces, frightening a few of the guests who didn't know about her semblance and her teleporting powers. Fox let out a small sigh before returning to the conversation he was having previously, hoping his acceptance of that event would deter anyone else from panicking.

Neo materialised just shy of the door, and through the plastic windows she could see the shapes of three figures. Walking outside, her suspicions were confirmed when standing in front of her were Cinder and Emerald, plus a third person; she had no idea who he was. She nodded her head in acknowledgement of their presence, not wishing to waste time typing out their names as a greeting.

"It certainly is pleasant to see you again Neo," Cinder began. Rather than her usual attire Neo always pictured, Cinder was in a simple, form-fitting black dress that finished around knee level. Her hair still flowed as it always had, draping over her left ear, and obviously she would be Cinder Fall if she wasn't rocking a pair of black stiletto heels. The tri coloured woman was taken slightly aback by the voice of her old boss; it wasn't the same sultry tone she initially remembered when pairing any memories to the fiery eyed woman, but it was a whole lot more audible than the struggling rasps she recalled from early on in their final year at Beacon. It was a little gravellier than she was used to hearing, but other than that she seemed okay. Audibly, at least - there's no telling how she was mentally coping with what Salem had done to her.

 **'** **Your voice seems to have improved'**

"It has, all thanks to this man here." Cinder extended her arm out towards the man beside her, who approached and wrapped his arm around the raven haired beauty's waist, an act that surprised the Bride. "This is Dr. Feng Huang. He hails from Anima, but moved to Vacuo to learn about medicine and healing." Neo nodded to him with a slight curtsy, a gesture he appreciated and returned with a bow from the hip.

"Ms. Rus- I mean, Mrs. Alistair. An honour to meet you." Neo smiled and nodded, then redirected her attention to Cinder. In the most blatant way possible, the mute simply pointed between him and her.

"Yes," was the easy response. "Dr Huang first saw me when Emerald and I went out one night, just to escape that room we were cooped up in, and I had an episode where I found breathing incredibly difficult to the point of suffocation. Luckily for me, this man was there, and he saved my life. After that, he stayed to help me along with Emerald, and we grew closer and closer."

"I'd say it had been about 3 and a half months since we started dating." Neo reached out and grabbed the woman's hands, a silent congratulations to her.

"Thank you, Neo. Congratulations yourself." They both turned to face Emerald, who was standing behind them. Emerald too was dressed differently from before. Her look consisted of a smart skirt in grey and a matching blouse, along with an apple green shirt. It looked very business-like, with the exception of the eye patch covering the place her eye once was; but it looked good on her, eye patch included, and Neo felt the need to comment. She knew how Emerald could be with things like her look and her confidence; even if they hated one another at some point in the past, Neo still paid attention.

 **'** **That outfit looks good Emerald. I like it'**

"Thanks," she replied, avoiding eye contact but smiling slightly all the same, "yours is really amazing Neo." Neo admired Emerald's progression ever since her incident in Salem's domain. She clearly had been working on improving her actual social skills as opposed to her fake ones, and whilst the road looked rough, she seemed to be making progress. Her semblance couldn't be called upon to ease her way out of the situation like before, so she was stuck as she was - but in her eye, she was benefitting from it all.

 **'** **Will you be staying with us?'**

She asked already suspecting the answer, so she wasn't shock at all when Cinder said "I'm afraid we can't stay. I have an appointment later on today and Emerald needs to get to work later on." The Bride's shoulders slumped slightly, but she accepted their reasonings all the same. Even so, that didn't stop her giving the dark skinned woman a quizzical look at the mention of her job.

"I work shifts at the local CCT station. The pay's... not spectacular, and the hours can be less than sociable, but at least the pay is there. My Aura's still trying to recover after having my semblance essentially ripped from me, so a low-level job like this is keeping me occupied at least." Neo accepted it and moved in to hug Emerald first, who much to the shorter woman's surprise hugged back with little reluctance or hesitance. "Goodbye Neo. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll be thinking of you."

" _I. Think. You. Too._ " she signed back as basically as she could. Cinder hugged Neo next.

"Thank you, Neo. I don't think either of us would have been able to do this without you. You set us up to keep pushing on, and we're never going to forget that." The temptress was handed a present by her boyfriend that she in turn passed to the Bride. "From both myself and Emerald, as a thank you and congratulations." With that, the three of them turned and walked back to the car they arrived in, leaving the mute staring after them for a couple of seconds before turning around and re-entering the gazebo.

"Who was that?" Fox inquired as his wife sat down beside him.

' _Cinder and Emerald,_ ' she replied, pulling on the small bow adorning the box she had been given. ' _They've moved on and tried to grow after the incident, and it seems like they have marvellously. Emerald's working at the CCT and Cinder's got a boyfriend._ '

"Really? Good for them." The spouses both started smiling at the previous criminals' gift for them; a set of three decorative stainless steel spoons. Two of them were tablespoons, each engraved on the handle. One said, 'For Her', the other, 'For Him'. But what really made them smile was the third spoon, a teaspoon with the words 'For Everyone Else' squeezed on. "Think that's to do with your ice cream addiction?"

' _It's not an addiction, and you know it. I like the taste, is all._ '

"Sure," he chuckled, planting a quick kiss on her lips. Idle chatter continued in the group for a few moments more before Yatsuhashi stood up, clinking his cutlery against the side of his glass, silencing everyone.

"Thank you everyone for attending today. To see not only two of my closest friends officially come together today in Velvet and Coco, but also to see my brother tying the knot with the person who, over time, became my little-big sister was truly magical. And to be the Best Man at his wedding, well... he didn't have many options to choose from." The comment brought forth a hearty laugh from the vast majority of the congregation. "Now there are many things I could say about Fox, and by extension Neo, in my speech here that would embarrass the pair of them, like the time I walked into our dorm room back at Beacon only to find Fox passed out and in an Ice Cream Coma, with Neo doing no sort of panicking but instead was silently laughing to herself and taking pictures..." most of those present began laughing at that even harder than before, with Fox turning to his wife in shock.

"You didn't help me?" he asked in disbelief.

' _I did... after I took a few photos and a video..._ '

"Why haven't I seen them then?"

' _Do you honestly think I'd keep something like_ _ **that**_ _on my Scroll for you to stumble upon? They went straight onto an external drive._ '

"... but I'm not going to do that," Yatsuhashi continued slyly. "Instead, I feel that acknowledging the history that these two have had with one another seems more appropriate for the occasion." A polite round of applause came, along with a muttered promise from Fox that he'd get him back someday. "On initiation back at Beacon, I happened upon a boy lost in the Emerald Forest. Now I do not mean lost as in the literal sense, although I would need to clarify with him myself whether he actually was."

The copper haired Groom shrugged with a grin. "Yeah, I had no clue which way to go."

"Alright then, so I had found someone lost - both physically and mentally - in the Emerald Forest. I say mentally because it was very clear he was nervous about being there. And I learnt from him later, he wasn't near anybody he knew for the first time in a long time, and so all he saw was darkness and similarity in the trees of the forest. There was no one he could turn to, and so he remained where he landed almost, slowly edging his way forward in the general direction he had landed. I stayed close, but out of the way. There were a few people that had landed near us, and I had even seen a couple of people look at Fox, then turn and run. They did not want to be paired with someone who lacked sight. I say that they were foolish.

"And so I approached him, I made myself known and that I was not a threat to him. Then came probably the weirdest part of our friendship, and I don't say that lightly. The very first thing he said to me after I had introduced myself was, 'My name is Fox Alistair. If we are going to be partners, I need to be able to see your Aura clearly. How tall are you?'" Some members of the wedding present looked puzzled, others giggled to themselves. "I told him, and his reply was 'Perfect. I need to ride on your back so that I can establish a connection between us, and we can keep moving.' Then without even waiting for a response, he jumped on my back and wrapped his legs around my waist, placed a hand on my shoulder and turned deadly silent.

"I highly doubt many, if any, of you have ever had a stranger essentially throw themselves onto you for a piggyback, but I can say that the experience was... different to what I had come to expect from students at Beacon. How wrong I was." Coco and Velvet chuckled politely to themselves at that. The two sisters of Team RWBY decided that it would be appropriate to stand up suddenly and fist pump in the air screaming "Yeah!" at what seemed like the top of their lungs. "Point proven," the giant laughed as the girls were dragged down to their seats by their respective partners - one in frustration, the other laughing. I'll let you guess which was which.

"Anyway, after that ordeal was over, Initiation was complete and teams were formed, I saw Fox repeating the same thing as he did with me to our new teammates, the lovely Coco Adel and Velvet Scarlatina, in our dorm. The only difference was that he seemed far more nervous at approaching and speaking to them than me, and he also didn't try to get a piggyback off them. But as a team, we were lacking in skills to communicate and truly gel with one another, our leader being the obvious exception to the rule. So when Coco, 'genius' that she is, brings in a large quantity of alcohol on the first Friday night we had together and declares that we're going to 'Drink until our barriers are gone, get to know each other, then drink some more until we forget them again and wake up tomorrow with a painful headache but three new friends.' You wouldn't believe how well that worked.

"In that evening, I saw who Fox really could be. He could laugh, joke, be merry, be a person. And after that night and the hangover that followed, the Fox as I now know him came to be. He tried looking for love - and as a blind boy, I imagine that quite difficult - among his peers, falling for a certain Rabbit eared Faunus to my right, an-"

"And look how _that_ turned out!" Coco interrupted, a mischievous grin on her face. The punchline landed true, and many members of the party roared with laughter, the embarrassed Groom and mortified Faunus in question joining in as well.

"Yes, Coco, we know what happened there. My point was, although he looked and found nothing, love eventually found him in a young woman called Neo in the latter half of our second year at Beacon. She opposed us originally, but something magical happened it seemed. I'll spare you the details, but in short, herself and Fox grew closer through circumstances they never imagined they would have encountered. They started dating because of a magical artifact that bonded to the pair's souls in a way to appease it. But when they were dating out of necessity, genuine affection weaved its way into their lives. They found someone who would be with them through thick and thin, good or bad, and we're here to celebrate them today." Yatsuhashi found his glass of champagne on the table and raised it high, a gesture everyone else mirrored. "To the Bride and Groom!"

"The Bride and Groom!" they sung back in chorus.

"...and to the Mates, I guess. They're here too."

"Watch it, Daichi..." the fashionista warned with a serious tone, but a joking look in her eye.

"To the Mates!" everyone else repeated. Once they had toasted, they began chatting to one another to pass the time as the Best Man's speech was over, meaning food was quite literally on the menu now. In terms of what was being served, there was nothing overtly fancy or special, for all intents and purposes it was just a light dinner. But that was their plan all along. Everybody ate what they had, and once all the plates were cleared nearly everyone had more than enough room for more. As the party was eating, there were snacks being prepared behind them all off to one side, so that when they were done, they could eat dessert to their hearts' and stomachs' content.

The tables everyone was sat at were moved back to make room for dancing, but not before Neo and Fox made their way to the space in the middle of the gazebo. The DJ, who Yang somehow knew from "a friend's nightclub in Vale" called Bärtot, started with a song from Syd Barrett called 'Love You', one the couple found by pure accident one day looking for songs to listen to.

 _Honey love you, honey little,_

 _Honey funny sunny morning_

 _Love you more funny love in the skyline baby_

 _Ice-cream 'scuse me,_

 _I've seen you looking good the other evening._

The couple swayed to the music, the occasional spin and flourish thrown in to break up the simple moves they'd stuck with throughout most of it. The song was simple and repetitive enough to not warrant anything excessive all the time.

 _Ice-cream 'scuse me,_

 _I've seen you looking good the other evening._

Every time the chorus came in with that line, they both sang it to each other in their heads as they always had with this song. The rest of the lyrics meant a lot to them, but the inclusion of the phrase _"Ice-cream 'scuse me"_ was prime ammo for the rest of the team to playfully mock Neo's obsession with the dairy product; honestly, they couldn't care what anyone else thought about it at that moment in time, it was their song now.

As the final chords rang out, the couple kissed in front of the congregation, earning them yet another round of applause. It was only then did Bärtot start playing more music and the Reception really began in full swing.

* * *

An hour after the first dance, and the Reception had come to life. Coco and Neo snuck off a few minutes after to change slightly, Coco grabbing her trusted beret and sunglasses, Neo to swap out of her traditional wedding gown into a much more traditional dress. It was still sticking to the colour theme of the wedding, but the fact it was shorter than her gown, lighter than it and without a veil and train made things more manageable for the ice cream girl. They also had a bit to drink back in the main building as well; Coco managed to smuggle in a small bottle under Velvet's nose, knowing full well she was going to be returning to the hall - hopefully without her - to have some. The couple toasted themselves, "to the new brides", so when they returned, they looked much more comfortable not only in terms of dress, but also because they had a bit more alcohol to drink than it seemed. Neither had much more after then, but they both agreed they wanted something to give them a buzz, but not enough to forget the rest of the day into the night.

Coco spoke to her Father and Dolly once they had managed to pull her away from the dance floor.

"Congratulations are in order, I believe," Rodney began, hugging his daughter tight.

"Thanks Dad. It's lovely to see you two attending."

"Well, I'm not going to wait around and hear that my daughter has gotten married from some other source, I wanted to be there and see it myself."

"And I grew up knowing you Coco," Dolly added, "it's only fitting I see you truly grow up."

"Thanks Doll." Coco hugged her as well.

"I do have to ask though, and I mean no offence when I do, but... why take up Velvet's surname? I know you two would have discussed it in detail beforehand, as you always used to do, and so I'm not going to judge, it's just a-"

"It's alright Doll, I was expecting that question sooner or later. Basically, it's the same reason that Velvet isn't marrying Colette Adel. If my Mother wanted to push everything onto me, then I was going to do anything and everything to stand against that. Changing my name legally to Coco at 16 was the first of those big steps. Taking up my Mate's surname is near enough the final one. I'd rather lose any stake I hold in the company than lose my little Cottontail, and that's what this was all about." The fashionista glanced off to one side, spying her Mate from across the gazebo. With a smile, she added, "Velvet means more to me than anything else on Remnant could. She insists at times that I helped her, which I may have, but she returned the favour tenfold. She helped me realise exactly the type of world I want to live in. We had been truly Mated for a couple of months before today, as we said earlier, but this was really the nail in the coffin for Mom."

"I understand Coco," her Father said, resting a hand on her shoulder, "and I'm proud of you for doing what you have done. I married into the Adel name years ago for power in this world and money, all selfish needs. When you came along, my goals changed - I wanted to be the best Father I could be _with_ the money I had now. I wanted to be self- _less_ , helping you grow into a fine young woman, which you certainly have. But seeing how your Mother treated you when you were younger, it made me want to flee from that life with you by my side. But in the same vein, you are the only reason I remain part of the family now. Adel's produce strong and powerful women who can lead the charge when called for and can get anything they set their minds to, and it's undeniable that you have that trait in you. I'm just glad I also see my compassionate side as well." The woman's Father, who stood a little shorter than his daughter with black wavy hair that had greyed a little at the sides over the years, spoke with tears in his eyes. "Coco Scarlatina, I am honoured to called you my daughter until the end of my days, regardless of what your Mom thinks." She had tears pooling too as she hugged him again. "I also want front row seats to when Kara loses it when she hears what you've done, and I won't get those tickets running away."

"Dad!" the beret toting woman chastised with a laugh, smacking his shoulder slightly to get her point across. "Thanks again for coming. And you too Dolly. I'm sure Mom's worrying something fierce as to why both of you requested holiday at the same time for the exact same date."

"She only signs the paperwork Coco, _I'm_ the one who actually deals with that sort of thing. Half the time she doesn't even look at what she's signing."

"Right," she giggled, "'cause I was wondering how you managed to sneak 'I'm going to Coco's Wedding' in as a valid reason for holiday." Dolly simply winked, leaned in and whispered into the caramel haired girl's ear.

"Vanishing ink pens are a great gift, don't you think?" Coco couldn't help the roar of laughter that escaped from her then.

As this was happening, Velvet was having a conversation with her Mom and two of her sisters.

"I'm so happy for you, Bun," Taffeta Scarlatina cooed to her daughter, hugging her almost violently. The matriarch of the family looked identical to her eldest daughter, save for the fact her hair was cut a little shorter and there were a few more lines on her face from age.

"Mom... I need... to... breath..." she choked out.

"Oh, sorry sweetie. I'm just so happy."

' _So you've said..._ ' the Mated Faunus thought to herself, not wishing to create any rifts from being snarky. Harriet, the middle of the two children here at four years Velvet's junior, but not wishing to become a Huntress, rolled her eyes playfully at her Mom's actions, then smiled at her sister.

"We are all really proud of you Velvet. And for Coco Adel to take on your surname is something fantastic in of itself."

"Harriet, it's nothing. Really. Her name kind of means nothing to her now, hasn't for a long time. You should know from what she's told you before, she really doesn't like her Mother, so this was the only course of action we saw fit. Besides, I think that her Mom finding out that she's not only married a woman and has taken _their_ name rather than them becoming an Adel, but also finding out her spouse is actually a Faunus whom she has also Mated for life with will cause Kara untold amounts of grief and frustration. And that's something I know Coco is going to be pretty pleased about."

"Vel'et?" came the call of Lily-Cooke Scarlatina, the youngest Faunus there and actually the youngest Scarlatina in general at just five and a half years old.

"Yes Cookie? What is it?"

"Why are you happy 'bout somebody being sad?" Velvet kneeled down and hoisted Lily-Cooke into her arms, carrying her on shoulder - an easy feat for someone like her who trained constantly for the best part of four years at Beacon.

"Because, my little Cookie, Coco's Mommy hasn't very nice to Coco all her life. I'm not happy about her being sad, but if Coco being happy _makes_ her Mommy sad, then I'm willing to overlook it." The little girl, who looked much like a chibi version of Velvet and Taffeta at her age, nodded at the comment, whether that was out of politeness or actual understanding the mage didn't know, but she accepted the nod all the same. Coco's laughter broke through to the Scarlatina family, all four pairs of Rabbit ears perking up and heads swivelling towards the sounds, with only Lily-Cooke holding her ears at the very loud noise to her. "See, Auntie Coco is happy now, much happier than she had been before."

"But she's with than man instead of you. Is she going to marry him now because he's making her happy without you?"

"Cookie!" she replied with a laugh, her sister and mother joining in as well. Suddenly, as if being summoned, Ruby appeared in a flash of rose petals, a gleam in her eyes.

"I heard cookies, where?" That made the oldest sibling laugh even harder as she lowered the five year old to the ground. "What?"

"Ruby Rose, this is part of my family: Taffeta Scarlatina - my Mom, my sister Harriet, and my youngest sibling Lily-Cooke. Her _nickname_ is Cookie." Ruby greeted all of them individually, but when it came to Lily-Cooke she muttered a small "Oh, I see" to them before she kneeled down to look at the brown eyed child, the smaller one's eyes filled with wonder and excitement.

"Hi there, my name's Ruby."

"Are you a mag'cian like Velvet?" the chibi Bunny asked.

"Huh?"

"I saw you appear like magic." Realisation hit Ruby.

"Oh, well not exactly. I move at speeds so fast it looks like I appear out of nowhere." That made the child slightly downcast, but the scythe wielder brought her mood back up again. "Did they say your nickname was 'Cookie'?"

"Yeah."

"That is so cool. I love cookies!" The child gasped, reaching out to tug on her Mother's dress.

"Mommy, she loves me! Does that mean I have to marry her?" All the adults laughed.

"No honey-bun, you don't have to marry her. Besides, you're too young for marriage."

"Hey, Cookie?" The small girl turned to stare into silver eyes. "My partner can do magic. She can make things magically appear out of nowhere, it's really cool! Do you want to come with me and ask her to show you some of her magical skills?" The child literally started bouncing with eagerness, wanting nothing more.

"Ruby."

"Yes, Mrs. Scarlatina?"

"Your partner is Weiss Schnee, isn't it?" Ruby briefly exhaled through her nose before answering; she knew that 'Faunus' and 'Schnee' went together like oil and water, and having no inclination to believe otherwise these people would think her no different.

"Weiss is nothing like anyone from the SDC you've ever heard about before, her and her sister Winter. In fact, she no longer is Heiress to the company anymore. Her Dad wants nothing to do with her really, and it shows in how she acts without him. She actually treats Faunus with respect, if that's what you were worried about. Our teammate Blake is a Faunus, and we've lasted through three and a half years with only a handful of major squabbles about it in that time, so I think that's more than enough proof she's different."

"Very well." She turned her attention to her youngest. "Go on sweetie," Taffeta agreed, "I won't be too far away, and Ruby is a nice girl, she'll look after you." There was a squeal, followed by a bounce straight to Ruby's side as the girl took the crimson tipped girl's hand and turned to find her partner. "Enjoy the magic, Lily-Cooke."

"Okay Mommy!" Ruby left with the child, both skipping towards the alabaster haired woman mingling with Maggie and Yatsuhashi on the opposite side of the tent.

"...Will she be alright Velvet?"

"Mom, Ruby wasn't lying when she said that Weiss was different. Sure, she was less than amicable on Initiation, but even then, she was never full on horrid towards our kind. Now, she's one of the most understanding humans I've ever met in that school, going so far as to even learn about different unique Faunus behaviours and traits, and special needs for those with specific species ailments."

"Really?"

"Yeah. She saved a named Copper in her year from dying after someone fed him a couple of squares of dark chocolate without thinking. I should mention that he was a Canine Faunus and she just cared for him and saved his life with her quick thinking without thinking anything of it. Everyone looked at her differently from then on, human and Faunus alike."

"Wow. I must admit," the matriarch admitted, "if you told me that girl was a Schnee after telling me that, I wouldn't have believed you. But seeing her, the way she acts around everyone, it's quite remarkable and I could believe it."

"Are we talking about me? Or someone else?" The two more senior Rabbits jumped in fear at the sudden appearance of Coco behind them. The older one's ears lay flat in fear, whereas the fashionista's Mate's fell back in frustration. Harriet had seen Coco coming, so the appearance didn't startle her.

"How many times?"

"Not enough to stick, apparently," Coco admitted, wrapping an arm around Velvet's waist. "I'm sure Velvs' already said it, but thank you for coming Taffeta."

"She has, yes, but the thanks is appreciated all the same."

"And I've got to say, welcome to the family now." Harriet grinned at her older sister and official sister-in-law. "And this time, it's official." With another smile. she shook her head in disbelief, still trying to convince herself she wasn't dreaming. "Coco Scarlatina... it doesn't seem possible."

"Yeah, well, Velvet Adel didn't have the same ring to it. And you know where I stand regarding my Mother; she's not the biggest fan of Faunus' and I didn't want to bring you into that firing line. This was the only logical course of action, really."

"Wow!" they all heard. Shifting their collective focus, they all saw Lily-Cooke perched on the shoulders of Ruby, reaching up to try and grab the summoned snowflakes that Weiss had made over their heads, all three faces lit up with glee. The sight made the rest of the Scarlatina's, both Faunus and human, smile.

* * *

"How are you not tired?" Maggie asked of Fox, the pair sitting on the side lines as the music was going, with Neo, Coco, Yang and others all up dancing. Fox seemed fine, Maggie seemed completely shattered. It was evening now, and a few guests had left for various reasons. Rodney and Dolly left due to business - they couldn't take too long for their 'holiday' and Atlas isn't exactly a hop, skip and jump away either. Yubae and Oakley left for similar travelling reasons, although Vinnie elected to remain at the reception, staying at the hotel overnight and then return home the next day. And the three Scarlatina's needed to go because a certain little bunny overworked herself with Ruby and Weiss, and as such ended up crashing hard to the point where she became a complete dead weight. Their departure didn't stop Harriet and Vulpé trying to poorly flirt with one another throughout the entire time they were near each other. It was nice to see that Harriet didn't take after her sister in that regard, yet Vulpé took after Fox.

"Huntsman," came his initial response, answering her question in the simplest of ways but choosing to expand said reasoning. "Our Auras are unlocked, and we train nearly every day for four years to be the best we can be in all fields, from speed to stamina, and utilising our Aura to better each of those fields." He smirked. "Although, Neo has been pretty stellar in terms of helping me with my stamina."

"I didn't want to hear about your bedroom escapades," the Faunus replied, glaring over that the Groom.

The man simply shrugged, stating, "we haven't spoken in a while, your interests might have changed in that time." His expression softened as she giggled at that, shifting a little closer to her. "But one thing I _did_ want to know regards Neo."

"What about her?" the faired haired woman inquired, turning herself to face the scarred man next to her.

"Why didn't you try with her?" The question took her by surprise, seemingly shocking the exhaustion right out of her body. "I know you've discussed it with her, but I never got the chance to ask. You don't have to te-"

"The honest reason was that I was scared. This beautiful woman comes into the café looking all gloomy, I go over to see what's wrong and she jumps up and kisses me. And it wasn't a kiss like I've admittedly had before where people are just trying to kiss me 'cause of how I look and dress, but this one felt like there was something else to it; I couldn't say what it was at the time, but it felt like there was passion in the mix rather than purely desire. As I know she's told you, one thing lead to another, lead to my bedroom, all from that hint of something. But again, it wasn't loveless in there. Sure, it started that way, but as we progressed things... developed. She did something and I responded by brushing her hair out of her face for her. Things got slower, more sensual, if you would. It became less and less 'having sex', more and more 'making love', and by the end she felt it too. We could have had something," she admitted through a clenched jaw and scrunched up fists, "but in that one moment I let fear take over and I said that I didn't think it would work out. The only other thing I remember saying was that she could come back whenever, hoping that that would be enough. I was wrong, because she went after you."

"I'm... I'm sorry Mags."

"Don't be sorry, you're married now. Clearly things had to have worked for you. I just... part of me wishes that I wasn't so scared of the outcome, and rather let what may have happened just happen. But I know that wouldn't last." She turned to look straight into his eyes. "You two have a connection, one that even Coco and Velvet with their Mate Link couldn't match, and it was going to pull you together no matter what. I had no chance against that." Fox looked at the Arctic Fox, seeing her downcast expression made him almost guilty. "Urgh, look at me. I'm bringing the whole wedding down. You don't need that." She went to get up and leave, but Fox grabbed her hand.

"Maggie, you don't have to leave y'know."

"I'm not leaving, just getting myself a drink. I thought I'd moved past that and now I'm just bringing up old memories, I need to wash them away again somehow." She wormed her hand out of his and made her way to the small bar. Neo saw this and left the dance floor to sit with her husband.

' _Lien for your thoughts, stranger?_ '

"I asked Maggie about you and her, and why she didn't try and pursue something."

' _Well that was stupid._ ' Neo decided that the meandering approach was not going to work here, so blunt and to the point it was. ' _We're at_ _ **our wedding**_ _, you don't pull that sort of shit anywhere really, but especially not that person's wedding. And didn't you already know the answer to that?_ '

"No, it never came up between us, and on the couple of occasions I've asked you about it, you always told me that 'speaking to Maggie is better than hearing the story through me'."

' _But not at our wedding. I'll go speak to her._ ' The Bride rose from the seat and pulled out her Scroll as she made her way over to the Arctic Fox Faunus.

"Hey Neo," she sighed as the pink and brown Bride sat down beside her, "I guess you spoke to Fox then? I'm fine, honestly."

 **'Yes I did, and no you're not. Fox can still be a little insensitive at times, he and I are aware of that, but that's not an excuse.'** Maggie knocked the drink she had back, then turned towards Neo.

"It's my memories and feelings, Neo. I don't want them to hurt me, or hinder me, but they always seem to do just that. I don't know wha-" A finger pressed against her lips, hushing her. Neo nodded her head off to one side, an indication that she wanted the Faunus to follow. She complied.

' _Fox, I'm going to be taking a walk with Maggie,_ ' she told him over the crowd, ' _we'll be back as soon as she's ready, but start to worry if we're gone any longer than an hour or so._ '

' _Okay. And tell her that I really am sorry for what I said._ '

' _I'll leave some for you too._ ' The two women stood and headed out of the tent, Maggie swapping out her shoes for more comfortable and practical flats, and they headed down to the on-grounds stream. The pair wandered along the water's edge in silence, Neo deliberately linking arms with the Faunus. The ice cream girl couldn't quite pin if that was making her more nervous or relaxed that they were walking along so intimately, and that worried her more.

 **'Mags, how are you feeling? And no beating around the bush, I want an honest answer'.**

The Faunus smiled weakly, then answered with, "defeated. I don't know what to do anymore, don't know how to continue on, if there is anything worth me continuing on for. I just feel... empty. I thought Duke was the one, you know. We'd grow old, have kids, make a family; but he was so self-centred that I'm glad things broke off when they did. Any later, and it may have gone even further south." The fair haired Faunus stared out onto the stream, glimpsing the sight of two others on the far side with her night vision. She saw Ruby and Weiss walking hand in hand along the stream, not saying anything or doing anything other than walking with fingers intertwined, and they were smiling, content with the hand they'd been dealt at this moment. The older pair found a bench nearby, sitting and staring out, the faintest sound of the reception lingering in the air behind them. "Life has a funny way of knocking me down, even when I feel on top of the world."

 **'So you were on top of the world once?'**

"...I don't follow."

Neo rolled her eyes, then expanded her statement. **'Yes, you feel like shit now, but you said you felt like you were on top of the world. Focus on that rather than the bad. You'll see where you are from the positives rather than the negatives, and you'll have a new sense of purpose. It won't be an overnight thing, but it'll come.'** Maggie scoffed. A scoff that turned into a small chuckle, that in turn became a light laugh, then a full on roar of sound.

"How the hell is it that you can't say a damn thing at all, yet somehow manage to do better at counselling than my actual counsellor? Ever considered a carrier change?" Neo's eyes swapped colours, her brown eye matching the same pink hue as her other eye, as she shook her head, then leaned it on the Faunus' shoulder. The mute held her Scroll in front of Maggie, revealing her answer to the woman.

 **'Unlike them, I've been through that shit. Seven and a half, nearly eight, years of doing everything wrong under the sky, finding very little good coming of it; I learnt then that the smallest bit of good I could do I'd make sure to let that stick with me until I was free from that nightmare I'd jumped into.**

 **'Finding Dart's Darting Shop meant I could keep up with my hobby from when I was a kid. 'Running away from them for a fortnight; even though the punishment afterwards was severe, the freedom was liberating. 'Saving a little girl's life in that violent Grimm attack on Mantle six years ago. All things I clung onto as proof that I wasn't all doom and gloom walking around with a parasol.**

 **'I was still willing to fight.**

 **'You're in a far better position than I was back then. Don't waste it, focus on the good.'** She pondered before handing over the Scroll once again. **'List your good.'**

"My good...?"

 **'Times where you've felt amazing. On top of the world'**

"Right." Before Maggie could start, Neo stood up and extended her hand out to the Faunus, who took it with a grin as they walked back towards the tent, the Bride feeling like they'll reach the conclusion she was after by the time they'd return. "Well, meeting you was definitely one." Neo nonchalantly nodded at that. "Po giving me that promotion was another, I guess. Duke taking me on..." The Faunus stopped herself, her mood shifting. The mute saw this and furrowed her brow, her eye colour swapping sides as she squeezed the Arctic Fox's hand hard, causing her to cry in pain. The shorter woman shook her head at the fair haired one, then took her free hand and pointed at her own face, which had a very obvious and over the top smile plastered all over it. It was Neo's way of saying 'Happy thoughts', and Maggie caught on. "Sorry, but was there any need for the squeezing?" The ice cream girl kissed the Faunus' hand as an apology, bringing a smile to her face at the silent gesture. "Duke taking me on that holiday to Southern Mistral for our Two-Year Anniversary was phenomenal, as was our first kiss really. And when you asked me to be the Maid of Honour after that bad day at work, and - wow, okay; there are a _lot_ of good that have happened to me."

 **'See? Keep that in mind at all times and you'll realise just how much good you've had. I'm sure you could list off a thousand and one things that went wrong in the same time frame, but these good things will balance out the bad.'** Maggie chuckled, leaning in and pecking the Bride on the cheek.

"Are you _sure_ you don't want to become a counsellor? You're good, great even." Neo laughed silently, shaking her head and presenting her Scroll once she'd replied.

 **'I don't want to be the only one on Team CFVYN to have a mundane job. Not yet, at least - let me undertake my two years worth of mandatory service first, then we'll talk.'** The bushy tailed woman started sniggering at that, and on realisation of what she had written Neo pulled a face and expanded her statement. **'Figuratively talk, you tit.'**

"No talking of my tits anymore missy, you're a married woman now. The only tits of your concern now are your own and where they are on your husband." Neo playfully smacked Maggie's arm. "That was for squeezing my hand earlier."

 **'I will need to speak with Fox about this, but I'm pretty sure our "Semi-Open Relationship" is still going to be ongoing even now. No promises (but I kind of want it to stay ;) )'**

"Orchid Alistair, you cheeky little minx you," the Faunus teased as they reached the gazebo.

' _Oh great, I'm getting the full name treatment again..._ ' she thought to herself, wondering if Fox would hear this solitary thought and be confused by its weirdness. ' _And getting used to that name may take me a while._ '

"But do ask though," she added in a whisper, "I would never and have never taken liberties with that offer, but it was always a door I liked knowing was open."

 **'As I said, I will ask him.'**

"Thanks Neo." She smacked the Bride's bottom, pushing her towards the tent's entrance. "Now go on, you've got some dancing to do with your husband, then an awesome Honeymoon to enjoy in the morning." She nodded and found the tan skinned man over on the far side of the giant white room. Her Faunus tail swayed as she grinned at her friend approaching her husband. ' _How did I end up with a friend like you Neo? I hope I can pay your kindness back someday._ '

* * *

 **{END OF PART 9}**

* * *

Nearly 14,000 words for the wedding. It's crazy where this story's come from as a simple tale that was meant to end uninterestingly at the aquarium. Now look at us, our main two couples are getting married (one couple properly this time), really nailing in Maggie's and Neo's friendship and the relationship they have with one another (it's over 80% of the way through the story and she's been mentioned in passing a handful of times - sorry not sorry to those who wanted a nice story about Neo and Fox, but are stuck with the OC that is Maggie), and there's more on the way!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	90. Introductions

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

 **{TIME SKIP}**

This takes place a little over three years after the events of the last chapter

From this point forward right up until the end of the story, Time Skips will be more prevalent and frequent than before. I won't point them out each and every time, but feel free to assume them based on context clues.

* * *

Greatswords fair well against the bony skull of a Beowolf, and this time was no exception. The creature barely had the time to let out a final cry before the blade sliced it in two. Even in the exhausted state he was in, Yatsuhashi was faring well against the Creatures of Grimm, despite the fact that these were merely the grunts of the never ending army of darkness. One tried to approach from behind and catch the swordsman off guard, but Neo teleported from wherever she was to right beside it, kicking it in the chest and knocking its leap off before it had even left the floor, straight into the path of Fox's blades.

"...Yatsu, Ni says to check down the street on our left, there shouldn't be any more of those things. I'm heading right, she said she's going to go up."

"Understood." The three of them split off, with Neo taking off up the surrounding buildings to get a better view of their battleground. The village they were protecting, a small settlement on the outskirts of Mistral called Kuyoimi, asked for aid to deal with a Grimm problem. Even though they'd literally just finished a mission, they took this job instantly and headed straight there. The buildings were substantial in size, so the height advantage came in handy for scouting out the area. Fortunately, there was nothing else to see, save the odd Grimm that it appeared the locals were banding together to fend off against on the far edges of where she could see. "I see nothing, Neo," Yatsuhashi commented over their comms.

"I've not got anything either - I think that's the lot."

"Good job! Regroup on me. Mission success!" came the voice from Neo's com line. Sadly for the mute, her inability to speak had not been reversed. Instead, using some of the money the team had accumulated in the three years since graduating Beacon, CFVYN invested in a headset for Neo that could relay very basic and generic phrases to those on the wavelength. It added more diversity to the group, letting the dual haired woman go out on her own rather than having to stick with someone else. She didn't use the function all the time, but it came in handy every now and again. And on missions like this with her, Fox and Yatsuhashi, it definitely was needed, especially as she was the leader and thus was calling the shots.

The two males of CFVYN joined their teammate once again, holstering their weapons and heading back to the main village hall where they were to meet with the Mayor. As they approached the hall, three people left the building and descended the stairs in front of it to speak to them. As they were doing so, Neo got a message on her Scroll that she hastily opened. It turns out that she had already missed one from Velvet, and the first message was the one she'd been anticipating for so long now, and the second was just an added bonus. So, she requested an immediate collection with a push of a button, then slid the device into her pocket and waited semi-patiently for the formalities to be over.

"I gather from the fact you three have arrived that the Grimm threat has been eradicated?" the Mayor asked. The woman wore very traditional attire, a formal kimono with her hair done up in a high bun and very minimalistic makeup. She did, however, wear a large pendant that came out over the front of the garb, signifying her status as Mayor of Kuyoimi. The two beside her wore much more normal clothing by comparison, one in a jacket and trousers with a shirt, the other in a casual grey dress.

"You would be correct," Yatsuhashi confirmed, "there may be one or two outliers around the village, but I believe our leader mentioned to us that your people were dealing with those ones personally."

"I agree, the odd Grimm is something we can band together to defeat, even after an attack like that. We thank you for your aid in times such as this." As the Mayor bowed, the two Huntsmen and the Huntress bowed too in respect. "I trust you would like our previous agreement to still stand regarding this?" The mute nodded for her teammates. "Very well, you shall receive it tomorrow - I am sorry, but that's the earliest we could possibly get it there."

"That's not a big worry anyway Ma'am," Fox countered, "we appreciate you doing this for us regardless."

"Of course." Neo's Scroll buzzed once again, this time all people around heard it. "Ah, that must be the news then. I shall waste your time no longer; go. Your friend needs you." The trio bowed once more before Neo turned and started running back to their temporary safe house for the mission. Once she was done with that, she headed to where they had scheduled the Bullhead to arrive for collection, the two Huntsmen following after her all the while.

Once on the Bullhead, Neo showed the pilot instructions prompting him to shout, "Sure thing; better hold on though, it won't wait for you, so I'm not going to make you wait!" Fox raised the question once the three of them were airborne, realising that asking as they were travelling and packing was probably not the best idea. Now they were on transport that they had literally no control over how fast or slow they'd get somewhere, it seemed like perfect Q&A time.

"Ni, care to tell us why we rushed off?"

" _Oh, sorry. Forgot._ " She reached into her pocket and grabbed the device, extending her arm so that the young men could see the three new messages on its screen.

 **V - 'Her waters broke! This is it guys!' {Received 40 minutes ago}**

 **'We're on our way there. Contractions have started hard, it's getting so close now. I'm so excited, so hurry your asses up!' {Received 8 minutes ago}**

 **'We're at the Hospital now, and it looks like this is going to be pretty uncomfortable for her. Please do not make me suffer in solitude' {Received 5 minutes ago}**

"It's here?!" Fox proclaimed.

' _Not yet, you idiot,_ ' Neo replied with a smirk on her face, ' _it's not an instantaneous thing - it can take hours, days even, but we know that Coco is going to try her hardest to get that thing out of her as fast as possible._ '

"Well, I hope she's not going to over work herself trying to give birth - we don't want her passing out midway through, do we?" The tank's claim made the other two giggle slightly, the pair linking hands as they sat and waited for their transport to get them where they needed to be as promptly as possible.

* * *

Vale Hospital hadn't changed much since the first time they were here back in CFVY's Second Year at Beacon. There were modifications and new equipment inside, but otherwise it appeared exactly the same - the same sleek and pristine white building atop the slight hill for all to see, and the mid-March sun shining in the sky through the intermittent clouds made the colour gleam all around for all to see. The trio entered in a hurry, approaching the front desk.

"Good afternoon, welcome to the Vale Hospital. How can I help?" The man behind the desk was human, with dark brown skin and jet black hair that was done up in a dreaded ponytail that fell down to his mid back.

Yatsuhashi spoke on behalf of them all. "We're teammates of Mrs. Scarlatina, she would have been admitted roughly half an hour ago. She's giving birth."

"One second sir." He searched on the screen and found who he was looking for. "Ah, Mrs. Scarlatina is on the Second Floor Maternity Ward with her wife, Room G6. Follow the signs above the doors and you should get to her with relative ease."

"Thanks," Fox uttered as they started to head off in the direction they were pointed to, travelling with a brisk walk to get there as fast as they could without running or Neo teleporting all over the place. After five minutes of stairs, twists and turns, they made it to Corridor G of the Maternity Ward, and were relieved to discover that Room G6 was right near the entrance they used to get there. As the three of them got closer to the room, they heard Coco screaming, obviously pushing to get the child out into the world. Peering into the room confirmed their suspicions, and Velvet was there as well, dressed in the same get up as the Doctors, Nurses and Midwife around them, the Faunus uttering words of encouragement to her wife as she pushed their child out.

A few moments later, there was one final large scream coming from the fashionista, followed by the unmistakable wailing of an infant, and at that moment the world froze. The pain melted away from Coco's face, and in its place a large smile formed. Velvet's smile grew, even underneath the face mask she wore, as she saw the child and got the honour of cutting the umbilical cord. Yatsuhashi teared up outside; he wasn't made of stone and they all knew it, but seeing him crying was a rarity in of itself. The husband and wife hugged each other close with grins on their faces, watching as the child was quickly examined, then wrapped in a blanket and handed to the Mother on the bed. Velvet removed her stained clothing and kissed her wife hard on the lips, their brown eyes both awash with tears of joy. Coco opened her eyes and spotted their teammates outside.

"Oh Cottontail~" she sang.

"Yes, Chocolate Drop?"

"We've got company." The caramel haired Mother nodded towards the window, causing the Faunus to turn and spot three familiar figures standing outside, all smiling at them, a gesture she reciprocated.

"Am I allowed to go and say hello?" she asked the Midwife, a large Ox Faunus with two filed down horns on his head.

"Of course my dear; I assume this is the rest of the famous Team CFVYN outside?"

"You assume correct," Velvet said with a grin, kissing Coco once more before making her way to the door and her teammates. "You made it!" she cried, throwing her arms around Yatsuhashi, who was the closest to the door.

" _We couldn't miss this Velvet - both of you would have killed us if we had,_ " Neo replied as she and Fox rounded off the hug.

"Yeah..." she admitted, chuckling to herself before they all broke the embrace and stared back into the room, with Coco cradling her new-born in her arms so delicately, a grin never leaving her face. "I'm a Mom. I'm actually a Mom." The mage couldn't quite believe she got to say that.

"You two are going to be fantastic parents," Fox assured his friend.

" _And we'll be with you every step of the way. She's just as much our responsibility as she is yours and Coco's._ "

"That's true," Velvet admitted. "But only _we_ are allowed to breastfeed, so don't even think about trying it, Neo. If she suddenly starts having a craving for ice cream instead of milk, then we're having words." The tri coloured woman looked downcast for a moment, her eyes swapping to an ivory white colour as her bottom lip stuck out in sadness.

"It _is_ a girl then," Yatsuhashi added, "I thought you said it was going to be a boy?"

"We said it was a likelihood that it was going to be a boy, but until it comes out there's no guarantee anything we guessed beforehand will be right. Besides, with Faunus traits in her, you can never truly tell until they're out of the womb anyway." They all stared back at the room, watching through blinds as people remained circling the bed, cleaning everything up and eventually leaving the room after a successful delivery.

After fifteen minutes, the group was snapped out of their hypnotised state of staring through the glass by the Ox Faunus Midwife. "We've weighed the child - she's a nice healthy 6 pounds, 1 ounce. I'll leave you five alone for a bit, she's ready to be seen now." They all thanked him for all his work over the past months with Coco, then entered the delivery room in near silence, save the slight creaking of floorboards under foot.

"Hey guys," Coco greeted with a whisper, "say hello to our little baby girl." Velvet came and stayed by Coco's head as the other three walked around to the side of the bed. Coco turned the bundle of towels so that everyone could see, and as three pairs of eyes looked in, a new face looked back. The new Scarlatina had a healthy cream skin tone and a small tuft of brown hair on her head. What was quite obvious to see at the moment, as she neither had hair nor a hat to cover her head, were the two small ears on top of her head. Even Coco admit they were a little ugly looking at the moment with no hair on them, but as she grew her Faunus ears would be as big and prominent as her Mother's, something both parents were proud to know she adopted from their combined genes.

" _She's so precious,_ " Neo signed, " _you two are truly lucky to have this. My biggest congratulations._ " She leaned in, giving Coco a chaste kiss on the lips and hugging Velvet.

"We're not the only ones to thank, remember?" Husband and wife, along with wife and wife, all turned to a now bashful Yatsuhashi.

The usually open man secluded himself a bit as he spoke. "It was nothing."

"Bullsh-"

"Coco, we have a child now," Velvet warned, glaring at her Mate for Life, "you need to cut down on the colourful language."

"...Sorry Velvs. But my point still stands, you cannot say 'It was nothing' when you look at us now. You are the reason I'm lying here with a child, mine and _Velvet's_ child, in my arms right now. We took a risk, and it paid off."

* * *

The conversation in question came in the September of the year prior, just after Team CFVYN had finished their two years of mandatory service as Huntsmen and Huntresses. The long and the short of it was that the two Mates wanted a kid. Both of them being female introduced the main problem of this proposed scenario - neither one of them could physically get the other one pregnant. They searched options; one was the adoption route, naturally, and whilst it was a good cause to support, they wanted a legitimate child of their own, however scientifically impossible that may have been in their minds at this point.

To the surprise of everyone, Yatsuhashi had done research on it and found that the DNA in a female embryo could be transferred to that of a man's sperm, effectively making it her sperm, and then have these genetically altered sperm artificially entered into the host woman's body to impregnate her with her partner's genes using the man's sperm almost as a boat to get there. On hearing that both Velvet and Coco, who had become increasingly more like her on another in certain aspects of their life as time progressed, grumbled at the fact that they'd be missing out the fun part, but Yatsuhashi reminded them that they still could do the fun part, it would just be like the rest of the times they did it though and nothing would come of it. Save from having someone impregnate one of the women themselves the old fashioned way, no amount of sex would change the fact that if they wanted their own genetic children, this was the only way to do that.

To everyone's surprise once again, when the two wives agreed that they wanted to go down that path, Yatsuhashi promptly offered himself as the donor.

"Are you sure about that Yatsu?" Coco asked, genuinely shocked at the speed at which he answered and the conviction in his voice.

The giant nodded, affirming that "If it would make the pair of you happy, then I would do it in a heartbeat." A small giggle came from the Faunus, but her Mate's face was far more downcast. The ex-Adel approached and rested a hand on her tall friend's arm.

"You don't have to do this if this is about Jade, y'know." He flinched at the name. "I'm sorry to bring her up, but I don't want you to-"

"Coco, I have moved on. We are friends, but I could never be what she wanted, and it was better that we became only such. This is because you and Velvet want children, and I want to aid in that." Her expression softened at the man's honesty, lightly punching his arm with a smile.

"It's hard to think people see you as someone to be terrified of, you're just a big softy." He shrugged, neither confirming nor denying her claim. Velvet jumped at him, wrapping her arms as far around him as they could go - even after all these years, she could never quite get her fingers to touch when she hugged him - and firing rapid "thank you"s at him.

When Coco told everyone that she was going to carry their child a few days later after they had finalised the initial plan with Yatsuhashi, Fox and Neo added this to the list of things that dumbfounded them in the past few weeks.

" _I feel compelled to ask why,_ " Neo began after willing her brain to function properly.

"I'm with Ni, I'd have pinned you as more of the Father-figure rather than the Mom, Coco. Plus, won't your scar affected it, considering where it hit you?"

"I know, but I only have so many middle fingers to hold up to my Mother - having a kid opens up a whole new range of ways to piss her off. And the first one would be to have it illegitimately - i.e., the not-fun way. The second would be to have my wife as the person who is 'impregnating me' so to speak and a third would be to be the one to carry when I have 'a woman by your side who could do that for you'. Honestly, we've fought Strigis* with their heads on backwards less that Kara. And no, it shouldn't - the blade didn't go anywhere near my womb, so that's still safe."

"Don't even get her started on the fact she'll be doing nothing productive for months, or that her body will be 'ruined' with stretch marks, or a whole plethora of other things that she can't wait to tell her Mom about in her overcharged hormonal state."

"Kara is going to fucking hate me, and it will be glorious~!" she practically sang in delight.

True to her word, as the first trimester became the second and even into the third, the name Coco Scarlatina became the bane of Kara Adel's existence. Phone calls were made on the regular purely to inform her how much she'd grown, photos - some taken by Coco of herself, others artistically done by her loving Mate - sent like clockwork showing the growth as well, among many, _many_ other things. Coco found it hilarious, as did all of her team. It even got to the point that all of them, with the exception of one at a time, posed in photos as well to really mess with her - but never Coco, she _had_ to be in every single one of the artistic ones herself, she wanted to look amazing, even if at times she felt like she looked like "a beach whale with a beret".

* * *

And here they were now, many months down the line, with a beautiful baby girl wrapped in towels in her Mother's arms.

"Yatsuhashi, your planning and research and willingness to do what you did has made the fact I am currently holding a minutes old baby in my arms that contains predominantly mine and Velvet's DNA in it, with hint traces of you naturally. I don't want you to ever think that what you do is nothing short of amazing, for all of us. I want you to know that you are loved."

"I-"

"And before you say it, I _know_ you don't love back, but _we_ all love _you_. Fox loves you. Neo loves you. And judging by what's coming through the Mark, these two Scarlatina's love you even more."

"What about the third?" he asked, indicating towards the baby, who was peacefully resting after her initial crying after leaving the womb.

"Yeah, Clemmy's going to love you two." The giant stifled a giggle as Neo and Fox did the same, with the Faunus of the group massaging her temples in an effort to calm the headache that had suddenly appeared. "What?"

"You dropped the name bomb," Velvet mentioned, frustration on her face and annoyance in her voice, "after so long of nearly doing it right and avoiding names, you fall at the final hurdle." The fashionista's face heated up with a strong blush. "What am I actually thinking though? How do I feel?" she asked, getting the caramel haired woman to read her Mate Mark instead of her voice and face.

 _Playful. Happy._

"You're not angry at me."

"No. Sure, the surprise is gone. But you didn't spill everything."

"... I don't want to anymore Velvs. You do it. I insist," she threw that last part in as she saw her wife drawing breath in protest, something the mage cursed her for noticing.

"Sure. Yatsuhashi Daichi, Orchid and Fox Alistair, we'd like you to be the first three to formally meet: Miss Clementine Scarlatina."

* * *

*Strigi - the ' **Senseless** ' AU's Owl-like Grimm who, much like some of their real life counterparts, could turn their heads around over 180 degrees.

* * *

I thought I'd give some reasoning behind Clementine's name. It's a French feminine variant of the Latin _Clement_ , which meant 'Mild', 'Merciful', or in some cases 'Tender'. There's a famous surname also means 'Tender', and that is _Lindt_ \- known for their chocolates. And Lindt chocolates have a tradition every Easter of creating Gold Bunnies. And that's the reverse process of how Clementine got her name. Plus, and I know she has 'Scarlet' in her surname, but 'Clementine' as a colour is a deep orange-red.

But also, it's for my friend ' **ClementineDavidson** '. If you haven't checked her stories out, why not? She won't be happy about that.  
All joking aside, Clementine has been a great friend this past year. It's a great privilege to know her, and I wanted to dedicate a character to. Heck, d'you know what? I think it'd be appropriate to dedicate the remaining 20 chapters to her. Go read through her work here or on AO3, tell her 'Fox sent you, and said to read this chapter', leave reviews and comments on her stories, favourite, kudos, bookmark and follow them too. Just make her feel loved, can y'all do that for me?

And Clem, if you're reading this, thank you for being there for me. You're just amazing; I hope you know that by now! I hope this somewhat repays you for your kindness in some small way.  
At least it's better than some evil Fox Faunus… ;)

Funnily enough, Clementine _Scarlatina_ was created long before I was properly talking to Clementine _Davidson;_ that was just a happy accident, unlike Coco and Velvet's Clementine, who obviously had to have a lot planned out for her to even come into this world. But now she is, she's going to be the safest baby ever.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	91. New Home, and New Problems

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

After Clementine had all of her tests to make sure there was nothing wrong with her, and after Coco had fully recovered from the fact she pushed another living being out of her, the two of them headed home, with Neo driving them back to their house. The team had two cars between them - one was a smaller car for when only two, potentially three, of them wanted to head out, the second was a much larger one meant specifically for the whole team and weapons - and currently Neo was driving Mother and Daughter home in the smaller of the two vehicles. She, along with Coco and Velvet, were the only three that had their driving licenses out of the five. Yatsuhashi grew up in Hai-no Hana where there was really no need to large vehicles, as most people walked from place to place or rarely left the village at all, so there was never any need to learn to drive, himself included. And Fox... well, you can't drive if you're blind. Besides, Fox had been the main source of revenue for CFVYN, along with Yatsuhashi. They needed to keep going on missions to keep the pay coming in for things like furniture, their house, their cars, things for Clementine, impulse food runs for heavily pregnant and craving Coco or stressed out of her mind and needing a treat to stop her from exploding Velvet, so he didn't make the find to learn. And whilst he was doing was okay in the short run, everyone noticed recently how drained their copper haired friend had become from doing it constantly for the past months.

"Yatsu," Velvet asked as they were setting things up for when Neo and Coco came home and Fox was on a small food run to the local shops ten minutes away, "why do you think Fox has been doing this?"

"I presume you mean throwing himself into everything, even at the risk of hurting himself?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"I am not sure at all," he answered honestly, pinning the small banner to the ceiling of their front room with a thumb tack. "I know he wants you and Coco to be happy with Clementine at home-"

"Not by putting himself in peril. He does things for us before he does things for himself."

"I agree."

"...Maybe he's lonely," the Rabbit suggested. The team tank paused what he was doing and looked at Velvet, curious as to what her thought process was on the matter. "It's no big secret that he and Neo had a bit of a heated disagreement regarding children at the moment - he wanted one now, she told him to wait until ours was a little more stable before introducing another mouth to feed, yada-yada - and ever since that he's been throwing himself at anything to do with us and Clementine. I think, heck I _know_ he wants children of his own. As does Neo. I think we're going to do something about it soon. He and Neo chose to stay here with us rather than going away from their anniversary last month despite constant protests on mine and Coco's parts."

"And mine too."

"There we are then; they're overdue a holiday, and we're going to make them have a discussion about children beforehand." The giant nodded before returning to setting up the room for their guests. Fox returned home carrying three bags worth of food, not only for now but also for the week as well, seeing as how they had no new missions lined up or were even planning on taking any on with the Scarlatina new-born at home. After they had all set up, Fox shot upstairs to take a quick nap to save himself from exhausting himself - reaffirming Yatsuhashi and Velvet's resolve to talk to him about this - until they heard a car pulling onto the driveway. The Faunus made sure who it was before calling Fox down, he needed all the sleep and rest he could get. Sure enough, Maggie got out of the car, so Fox got to rest. Velvet peered through the window and saw Maggie, who was carrying a small bag with her, and mimed to keep quiet as she entered, which she agreed to.

"Hey Maggie," Velvet greeted with a hug and friendly peck on the cheek, "so nice of you to join us."

"I wasn't going to miss this. Neo messaged me the moment they were given the all-clear at the Hospital, so they shouldn't be too long now." She made her way inside, everyone keeping their voices low so to not wake Fox. "But enough about them, a congratulations are in order for you Mrs Scarlatina." The lighter coloured Faunus lay her bag down on the coffee table and embraced the Rabbit Faunus in a tight, loving hug. "You're a Mom! That's so crazy to think, considering things."

"I know, but we're both happy."

"Awesome! I got them a little something, I hope that's alright."

"Of course it is Maggie." The Arctic Fox gestured towards the bag, but Velvet declined. "I think we'll wait until Coco and the baby are home first, then we can open it together."

"Suit yourself. Sorry, I haven't said hello to you yet have I big guy?"

"I'm easy to miss," Yatsuhashi joked. "How have you been?"

"Not too bad. Forgot to ask, why are we all speaking in hushed voices?" Yatsuhashi informed her about the fact Fox and Neo had been running around after Coco and Velvet, more so the former than the latter, and were hardly getting much rest as a result, and the fact that it may be stemming from an argument the couple had regarding children. "Wait, didn't Neo _want_ children?"

"She does, but apparently not with us having a kid now," Velvet mentioned. "Her argument was that we wouldn't be able to have two of the more natural leaders and tacticians out of commission on maternity leave, followed by their partners nearer the time _and_ keep the income coming in that's large enough to sustain and support a new family of what would then be seven."

"I... kind of see her logic. And Fox?"

"Believed exactly what she didn't. He thought that we could manage, and that when our team dropped down to a three person team, we could still manage the same level of missions at the same sort of Tier. Over Coco's, and eventually my own, leave from the group, we'd proven that we did alright with a four man team at the same level, but we barely managed three higher Tier missions without one of us nearly dying." Maggie gasped, this was the first she'd heard of this. "So we had to drop down to B-Tier and A-Tier missions to try and bring any revenue in for us. It worked, but some of those missions paid pittance compared to what we normally bring in. It made us realise that we are very fortunate to have graduated as we did. Even with trying to cut our budget down here, pregnancy is an unpredictable monster that had us throwing money at it left, right and centre."

"In the end," Yatsuhashi added, "Fox was trying to sign us up for more missions than we could take on, and he succeeded at first. But when we all grew tired from doing a mission with next to no recovery time afterwards, we attempted to reason with him. He wouldn't listen, said we needed to do what we could for the child and make sure we had enough to support it."

"We did, and we do. We have more than enough every month to get by and then some with a child adding to that, even taking our bills and food shopping out of the equation. He was panicking for us, and we were both panicking pretty badly anyway." Maggie couldn't help but laugh at that, her voice raising high enough to alert the sleeping copper haired man upstairs. "I mean, I was hormonal because of mine and Coco's Link, but also pregnancy realising that I needed to be Mommy as well. And Coco, phew! Don't get me _started_ on what Coco was like." Maggie laughed some more, Yatsuhashi even joined in with the merriment. "I mean, have you ever tried to convince a pregnant person that mint choc chip ice cream doesn't go well with melted cheese and ketchup?"

"Oh Gods, that's sounds horrendous!" the Arctic Fox Faunus chuckled through a shudder and a disgusted voice.

"It was! She made me eat some. I had to run to the bin to spit it out. It tasted like feet. Like, _bad_ feet." Maggie shuddered once again at the thought, laughing as she did. They all stopped when they heard Fox making his way down the stairs, still a little sleepy eyed. "Shit, we were too loud," she whispered. The giant nodded but remained silent.

"Oh, hey Maggie. When'd you get here?"

"'bout five, ten minutes ago. You alright? You look like you need sleep."

"I'm fine," came the slightly snappy response, something he didn't quite realise he'd done, but everyone else sure did. Fortunately, they were saved by the sound of someone else pulling up on the driveway. And with a quick glance outside, they saw it was Coco, Neo and the baby. Yatsuhashi made his way to the door to let the pair inside, making sure that Fox was nowhere near him insisting he could 'do this instead', something he really liked doing especially with menial tasks like this.

"Hey there big guy," Coco said as she got to the door.

"Glad to see you three made it home alright," he responded with a smile.

The fashionista, unburdened by her sunglasses, let her eyes drift backwards towards the tri coloured woman at the car, getting various different things out from it. "Honestly," she mentioned in a hushed tone, "with Neo at the wheel and my precious cargo on board, she would have gone into a full blown panic if even a single hair was out of place on either of us." He nodded with a small sigh, admitting to the sad truth of it all, before stepping out of the way to let the two inside, Neo following a few seconds after with a couple of bags, her smile a 'thank you' and greeting rolled into one.

The Arctic Fox stood with a smile as Coco and the baby came into the living room. "Hi Coco."

"I _knew_ I recognised the car. How are you Maggie?"

"I'm great, thanks. How's everything for you?"

"I couldn't be happier, now that Velvet and I have this little bundle of joy in our lives." As Maggie approached, Coco leaned down towards the bundle in her arms and softly spoke to it. "Now be nice, this is your Godmother you're meeting." The fair haired Faunus let out a small giggle as she came close to the new Mother. "This is Magnolia, she's going to be your Godmother and you'll call her 'Aunt Maggie'. Maggie, meet your Goddaughter; Clementine Scarlatina." As one Faunus gazed at the other, Clementine's eyes opened, and she met the eyes of Carolina blue with her own weak chocolate brown orbs.

"Hi Clementine, I'm your Auntie Maggie," the Faunus cooed. A small smile graced the new-born's face, and Maggie's heart melted with an overabundance of adorable. "Oh my Gods, aren't you just the most adorable little thing?" She fussed over the baby for some time, taking some of the weight off Velvet and Coco's minds as they both needed some breathing room now that their little girl was here. Both Neo and Fox tried to do more than they needed to, especially Fox again, but each time they were told "No!" by either one of, sometimes both, parents. Eventually, Clementine needed sleep, so Velvet took the new-born to her crib in hers and Coco's room, tucking her in all cosily before coming back to join the adults.

"Talk about an eventful day," Velvet sighed, bringing in six small glasses of champagne from the kitchen. She handed everyone a glass before laying the tray down on the table and taking her own.

"Yeah. Pushing a kid out of you _really_ tires you out," Coco admitted.

"Didn't need to know that Coco," Fox mentioned as an aside, barely audible to anyone.

"Sure you didn't, Fox," the fashionista replied with a small smirk. She raised her glass to begin the toast. "To Clementine, and shared parenthood."

"To Clementine." The six of them clinked their glasses together and took a drink. As they finished, Neo started silently coughing, like she had swallowed something nasty.

"Neo? Ni, what's the pro-" But he couldn't finish his question as he too started coughing badly. Their eyes both grew heavy and their brains started to shut down, and before they knew it, they had drifted off into a deep sleep.

The leader sighed, rubbing her temple as Yatsuhashi took the glasses out of their hands. "I wish we didn't have to resort to that," she admitted, smile fading to a much more solemn look. The new Mother turned to Maggie, who was kept in the dark about this and was obviously a little confused as to what had just happened. "They wouldn't have slept if they'd had the choice. Both of them would have been up to look after Clementine in the night if she started crying, even though we're in the same room as her, and they're on the other side of the house. We're eliminating that problem right away, and we're going to have a chat to them tomorrow."

As much as she didn't want to admit that what the three of them had just done was right, Maggie simply nodded her head and said, "Yeah, I understand."

* * *

CVY is nothing if not careful for our main pairing. They treat them with love and respect... honest.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	92. A Little Help from a Friend

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The Alistairs woke up the next day to the sound of their bedroom door shutting. Opening his eyes first, Fox spotted the remaining three members of Team CFVYN all staring straight at them.

"Mornin' guys..." he mumbled with a yawn, sitting up to talk with them. "What's all this in aid of?"

"This is an intervention," Coco bluntly replied, "for _both of you._ " The harsher tone, along with the glare and heavily emphasised final words from the gunner, was an unspoken command for Fox to wake his sleeping wife for this, one that he abided by with haste.

' _Neo, hunny, you need to get up._ ' The mute stirred, her eyes fluttering open. They registered the rest of the team, then drifted shut once more. A couple of seconds later, her brain registered the rest of the team, and at once she was up.

"And it's not morning either." Fox seemed confused, he never slept in; they must be joking. A glance at the clock told the scarred man that they weren't - it was currently 12:37 in the afternoon.

"What did you do to us?" he asked them in equal parts fear and anger, glowering as he did.

"I slipped something into both of your drinks last night, a little lavender essence and trace chloroform concoction. It's the same sort of thing Yatsu and I used back at Beacon we used to get Coco to sleep, only in drinkable liquid form."

"Wait, what?" Velvet continued on, ignoring the obvious confusion of her Mate.

"We needed to discuss something amongst the three of us, and we didn't want you two running around after us like our servants. Especially considering we were talking _about_ you." The pair in bed looked at each other with worried expressions, then, realising that there was no way they would escape this, both sat themselves up properly and made themselves comfortable for what was about to come.

" _Where's Clementine?_ "

Neither of the parents looked impressed at Neo's question, and she realised that the second she asked. Yatsuhashi answered for them instead. "She is taking a nap at the moment. Hopefully, if you work with us, we can get this all sorted before she wakes for the afternoon."

"You two are being ridiculous."

"Wow, straight to the point," Fox observed. The glare from his team leader showed that this really wasn't the place to be making jokes.

"You ran around after us like we were incompetent as parents before our child had even come into this world, and even now I feel like you want to shoot off and go nurture her."

"Well, I did want kids," Fox admitted.

" _As did I,_ " Neo countered, " _just not right now, especially with Clementine so young._ "

"What does that have to do with anything?"

" _Everything Fox! We don't have enough to support a family of seven, and we didn't have the luxury of losing all of our income._ "

"Actually," Velvet interjected, breaking up the potential argument, "we do." She got her Scroll out and handed it to the Alistairs. As they read through, Fox's eyes widened, and Neo's swapped to ivory white as they went through it all. On finishing, they stared at the three others in the room, shocked and guilty to say the least.

"Guys, I-"

"You didn't even look, did you?" Velvet tried her hardest not to shout, but she couldn't help but raise her voice there. They shook their heads silently, not wishing to bring about the wrath of an angry Velvet Scarlatina. "Once we had completed our two years and found out we wanted and could actually have kids, we looked up this thing on our Scrolls and found out that there is actually an allowance for anyone in a Huntsman team who becomes pregnant. It's meant to sustain them and their team, bringing in a set amount per month that will make up for any lapses in efficiency due to numbers dropping in the team by one, potentially two. And as two _Huntresses_ taking leave for our own children, we would have been given more than most normal allowances - not by much, but enough to be noticeable."

"I remember that Velvs did actually tell both of you this, but neither of you were in the right frame of mind to even listen properly. We ended up applying for it behind your backs because you were just so focussed on missions."

"..." Fox went to go speak, but the second his mouth opened his brain shut down and he remained there like a dark skinned fish, mouth agape noiselessly. Eventually, he sighed, shutting his mouth and bowing his head in shame. ' _What have we done, Neo?_ '

' _Gods, how blind were we all that time? No offence._ '

A small smile ghosted his way over his face for but a second before it faded away again. ' _I've had sight for the best part of five years now, I'm over the blind jokes._ '

"And do you know what the worst part about all of that was for us?" Coco asked, arms folded across her chest and stern expression on her face. "You missed your own damn wedding anniversary parading after us!" The lightbulbs over their heads both clicked at the exact same time, and with that they realised how single-minded they had been. "The day in the year where the two of you should have come first, and you spent it running around after Velvet and me, despite us trying to dissuade you from being a pair of fucking idiots - a task we all clearly failed at."

"So, you two _are_ going to take some time off from... well, us. You're going to find somewhere and go on holiday for at the very _least_ a weekend, and in that time, you will talk about what you're going to do about us," Velvet pointed between herself and Coco, and by extension Clementine, "and what you're going to do about kids of your own."

" _What? Velvet, what's brought that about?_ "

"Take a wild guess, Neo," the Faunus replied with aggressive sarcasm.

"You now actually _know_ that you can be supported through pregnancy and beyond just as Coco and Velvet had been, so worries about money should be out of the window. Focus on what you two want to do as Husband and Wife, Mother and Father, _not_ as Huntsman and Huntress." Yatsuhashi spoke words of wisdom, ones they listen to immediately.

"Okay, we'll do it."

"Good." Coco unfolded her arms, her displeasure at the couple gone... for the moment. As they both tried to get up to start looking, they fell the second their feet hit the floor, tumbling in unison like drunk ballet dancers. Any tension in the room was gone as Coco, Velvet and Yatsuhashi all began roaring with laughter.

"What the hell was that all about?!"

"Sorry," Velvet 'apologised', "I guess I forgot to mention that the concoction affects motor control as well. You may not be able to walk properly for at least another hour or two."

"And when you do," Coco added, still chortling away, "you'll be walking like someone stuck something up your asses and it's still there!" Coco continued to roll around uproariously as the Alistairs remained lying on the floor, unable to escape the laughter of their leader.

* * *

Searching for a holiday destination for the pair of them was surprisingly difficult. After many minutes of inactivity at the mercy of a laughing Coco Scarlatina and her Mate's knock-out juice, the pair finally managed to move themselves, get something to eat and settle down to look through somewhere to go away from everything for a while. Whilst they were doing that the pair were forbidden to try and do anything regarding Clementine until they had found somewhere for themselves that was approved by the remaining three - something Neo didn't understand why she had to abide to that rule, she _was_ the oldest in here by a handful of years - as being somewhere decently deserving for an anniversary getaway.

' _It's no use, I keep looking at places that would work well for the team, not for us._ ' She placed her Scroll down on the armrest and flopped back into the sofa. ' _This is silly and stupid and other negative feelings starting with "s"._ ' Neo wished she could have conveyed her frustration audibly in groan format, but alas, she could not. Turning to Fox, who wore an expression of equal annoyance at the task, she asked him ' _do we really need to go on holiday?_ '

"Yes!" he shot back without so much as looking up from his Scroll for even the smallest of time frames.

' _Whoa! Harsh much?_ ' she tried, aiming to lighten the mood. All that comment did was light a fuse that made the scarred man explode in anger. He spun around to stare at her, his dark copper brown eyes drilling holes into her with the intensity of the stare.

"I don't _care_ about being harsh or not Neo, I care about looking after that child! And the _only_ way they will let us do that is for us to go on this holiday so that I'll be able to care for her again!" Fox turned back before he saw Neo's face of horror at what he'd just said, one that morphed into determined rage in three seconds flat. She grabbed him by the shoulder hard, spinning him to face her.

' _I want kids as well Fox,_ ' she began, her internal voice fuming just as his external one was not a second before, ' _I have for a while, but I wasn't ready, Velvet and Coco were having one and we didn't look to see if there was an allowance for a Huntress on maternity leave - which we now know there is. So-_ '

"Well, that's great and all, but that's nine months away. Clementine is here now, we can help her now."

' _Do you just want to spend every waking moment going after their kid? Fox, Coco is our team leader, she can handle smelly diapers and night time feedings. For Dust sake, she could be up in a second when you were screaming about The Nothing back at Beacon. And Velvet doesn't even_ _ **need**_ _a radio to hear Clementine starting to whimper, even though they're in the same room. They can manage alone, we can start our own family._ '

"Oh, so are they not family now?"

' _That's not what I mean by that and you know it! Also, keep your voice down, Clem's around now._ '

"So what?!" he bellowed, followed by the unsurprising cry of a startled and frightened new-born.

"Really Fox?" Velvet asked as she walked past the pair towards her child, "you have a telepathic link with Neo that means you can talk as loud as you'd like in your heads, and you decide that screaming is the best option with a baby in the house?" Not giving him a chance to answer back, she was already gone.

' _See? So are you just annoyed that you don't have your own child right here and now?_ '

The brawler was slow to answer, his head drooping over to stare at the ground, before he eventually spoke to his wife again. Internally this time. ' _Yeah, that's the main reason._ '

' _Why did you say nothing?_ '

' _... I felt we could work it out eventually, but you were-_ _ **we**_ _were both so stubborn in our approach to this that neither of us were willing to give way to the other's ideas. And, in the end, all we did was push it out of the way. We stayed busy by looking after Velvet and Coco, or running off and doing unnecessary missions, all to avoid talking it out._ '

' _Yeah... look where that's gotten us._ ' They said nothing more for the moment, letting the silence between them speak volumes.

"Shh, shh, it's alright Clementine, it's alright," they heard in their silence. Velvet was doing a marvellous job at calming her crying daughter down, speaking soothingly to her and rocking her gently in her embrace. Husband and Wife silently praised the Gods that Coco and Yatsuhashi had to go out, else them even being able to have kids would have become an impossibility - Coco had threatened on more than one occasion that she wouldn't hesitate to "change Fox's gender on a whim", something they both have in the back of their minds as an ongoing and incredibly real threat. "It was just Uncle Fox and Auntie Neo having an argument. I know I shouldn't be defending them, but they're having a rough time." Velvet remained in the room, swaying from side to side with Clementine in her arms, not noticing - or at the very least not acknowledging - the heads of couple she was just talking about poking around the door frame. "They want to give you someone to grow up besides and play with, but I can tell that they're lost and unsure."

' _Well, you're not wrong Velvs,_ ' Neo commented solemnly to herself and Fox.

"But I promise you, once they have everything sorted between them and they've taken some time to relax for themselves, they're going to come back happier and we'll become a full family again." She lay the child back down in her crib, the crying having subsided and tiredness taking over her young body once again. Velvet watched her for a minute or two, just standing there and smiling down on her daughter. ' _Gods, that feels so amazing to say._ _ **My**_ _daughter._ '

She planted a kiss on Clementine's forehead, an action that garnered a small lip curl in response, and then turned to leave the room. When she saw Fox and Neo at the doorway, having not heard them approaching and fully expecting them to still be finding holidays for themselves, she jumped in fright and screamed slightly, clamping her mouth the second she did. Luckily, she caught herself before her scream could really register with Clementine, but her disappointed scowl remained as she ushered them silently away.

"How could you two sneak up on _me?_ " she asked them once they were all back on the sofa away from the child. "Why didn't I hear you?"

" _A crying child may be the reason,_ " Neo began, " _not only with the noise, but the fact you'd be pretty preoccupied with her to notice anything else._ " The Faunus sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck, admitting that that reasoning sounds fair.

"Did you mean what you said back there? About us being a family again?"

"Of course I did, Fox. We are family, but you two are being a bit disjointed by trying to be too involved with us. Honestly, whilst Coco and Yatsu insisted that we told you that taking a holiday was because you needed to make up for you missing your own anniversary - which isn't technically false - I wanted to say that you also needed to take one to find yourselves again. Be the couple you are, not the maids you are trying to be."

"Why am I a maid?" Fox queried, worrying more about that fact than the whole sentiment behind what Velvet was trying to say.

"Be-"

" _Because you would look cute in a dress, and an ass like that is begging to be shown off._ " Fox's face flushed instantly at the remark to the same shade of red as the Faunus currently laughing at him, whether said flush came from embarrassment or flattery he was unsure.

"Neo!" he almost whined.

' _Fox!_ ' she mimicked perfectly, bringing about a pout from the man. ' _See, I can do it too._ ' Petulance lasted seconds before he was consumed by the laughter that was circulating the room.

"Now," the Faunus managed as her laughs dissipated into nothing, but her smile remained, "seeing as I'm not too exhausted for laughing at you this morning-"

' _We still haven't forgiven her properly for that, have we?_ '

' _Not really, no._ '

' _Good, I was just checking._ '

"-and I don't feel like Clementine is going to be making me run around for a while, would you two like some help finding somewhere for your holiday?"

' _...okay, are we_ _ **sure**_ _we haven't forgiven her yet?_ '

' _Don't you dare Neo!_ '

' _What? We could use help._ '

' _I... damnit, I hate it when you're right._ '

' _How can you hate me_ _ **all**_ _the time?_ '

' _Shut up._ ' Her response was to wink and stick her tongue out at her husband. Honestly, with gestures like that, you'd be shocked if someone was to tell you that the petite ice cream girl was actually the older of the two by a fair few years. "Yes please, it'd be a huge help to us."

"Did Neo win something?" the Faunus asked, her expression not wavering as she did.

"Damnit, how did you know?"

"Her expression kind of said so, and you rarely ever say 'please' - something you are going to have to change as Clementine is growing up. I'm not having her raised without manners, and if you can start now, she'll look up to you when she's old enough to really learn."

Fox sighed. Is it really _that_ obvious? Looking up and seeing his expression, the small nods they were giving answered his unspoken question clearly. "Thank guys," he replied sarcastically.

* * *

So, I have a request to ask of y'all. I'd like to see how some of you interpret moments in ' **Senseless** '. I've been meaning to ask for a while, but my mind has been going loopy. Uh, loopi _er_.

How do you see CFVYN looking post-time skip in Year 4 and beyond, if any different at all?  
What does Maggie look like in your mind's eye?  
What sort of a person was Uncle Lang before his passing?  
How about moments, like CFVY and Neo vs. the Nuckelavee? Or CFVYN vs. the Akkorokamui? Maybe even smaller moments.

Message me on here if you have anything you want to draw from my story, I'll link you to my Tumbler page (I know how it's spelt, FFnet doesn't like any other site names though) and let's see what creativity comes from your minds, shall we?

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	93. A Flying Fu… you know the rest

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

"Spare clothes?"

' _Uh huh. Weapons?_ ' Fox extended his bracelets into their rear facing blade mode, answering her question wordlessly. She nodded in return, spinning her parasol along its axis in her hand before partially unsheathing the blade, acknowledging its presence, then sheathing it once more.

"Our license to _carry_ these weapons?" Neo's eyes shot ghostly white as she stared at her husband. "Neo?" She started to pat down her body, frantically searching for their Huntsman licenses on her person. The licenses meant that they could carry their weapons around with them without the need to be stopped on every street corner for proof as to why. Also, free drinks at some places - up to a certain point, of course. "Neo," Fox said again, more annoyed than before. Still she searched on herself, every pocket she had. In her 'search', she deemed to a good strategy to remove her top - a salmon pink knitted turtleneck jumper - and bra to search in the inside of the latter. She even had the gall to offer him the bra to look through, the gesture of extending both of her arms forward deliberately accentuating her breasts to distracting levels. "Yes, your boobs are very nice hunny, now stop playing around. It doesn't work when what you were 'trying to search for' was clearly in my view and had been the entire time." Neo stopped, following Fox's eyes down towards a single spot on the bed just underneath the single suitcase they were sharing for the trip, right at two Huntsman licenses; one for Mr. Fox Alistair, the other for Mrs. Orchid "Neo" Alistair.

' _Couldn't you have just played along?_ ' she asked as she scooped up the licenses and stowed them away safely in the bag. Fox shook his head at the question. ' _Not even for a minute or two?_ '

"When we're on the clock to get the Airship to South-East Vacuo if we want all five days of our late-anniversary holiday, probably not."

' _And whose fault is it that we're celebrating our anniversary late?_ '

"Ours, collectively."

' _Yup!_ ' she replied, somehow still popping the 'p' even inside his head. ' _Now; sunglasses?_ ' He flicked his pair open and proceeded to wear them as an answer.

"I think I've got mine." She rolled her eyes at the obvious statement, putting her bra back on but leaving the turtleneck off - Vacuo isn't exactly a jumper weather place, more a sundresses, shorts and swimwear type of place.

"Tickets?" came Yatsuhashi's call from outside the room.

"Yes Yatsu, they're right he- um... Ni, do you have the tickets?"

' _I thought you had them._ '

"No, I thought _you_ did." There was a brief moment of the pair looking around their immediate vicinity before locking onto each other's eyes, and the look they sent each other spoke volumes - the other didn't have the tickets, and they weren't joking.

"Shit!"  
' _Shit!_ '

Their searching effort doubled as they were now looking in every nook and cranny they could find in the room in an attempt to locate the two tickets.

"Did you ask us if we'd seen them?" the booming voice came again from outside.

"No, we haven't."

"...Are you going to?" he prompted.

"Urgh, fine. Yatsu, where are our tickets?"

"They are currently in my hand." Both Alistairs stopped searching, turned to face one another, nodded, reached for their partner's hand and Neo teleported them both to the dining room where Yatsuhashi was waiting - all of this within a second or two. "You told me to keep them with me rather than yourselves so that you didn't forget or lose them. And, fortunately for you," he admitted as he flicked the two cards towards the two holiday-goers, "I don't have someone to distract me from forgetting this." Neo wanted so bad to throw a remark back at him about 'actually having someone' or something, but to say it would have in poor taste to do so would have been majorly downplaying that statement.

" _Thanks for reminding us, big guy._ "

"Any time Neo. You two were stressed enough as is to have this worry piled on top." Coco and Velvet entered the room now with Clementine in tow.

"You two ready to bounce?" their leader asked whilst cradling their child in her arms.

"You're talking about us, right? Not your boobs?"

"Okay, you need to take your head out of the gutter Fox. Of course I was talking about you."

"Just checking." Neo swore she heard Coco mutter "sure you were..." under her breath as Fox continued. "Yeah, we're all packed and ready to go."

"Now remember," Velvet cautioned, "Lac Filio is one of the only remaining oases in Vacuo, so don't do anything rash. Vacuans are accommodating, but can be pretty ruthless if you get on their bad side."

" _We know,_ " Neo replied, " _we've seen Shade students at 41st and 42nd Vytal Festival do pretty well, especially considering they had the home-field advantage in 41._ "

"The regular folk there aren't as pleasant as the students though. I'd still watch your step."

"Duly noted Coco." The couple went in and initiated a group hug around Coco and Clementine, all smiling and happy with where they all collectively were in their lives.

"Now come on you two, I didn't spend hours looking for places for you to go for you to miss your flight over there. Let's go, let's go!" Velvet's less that subtle way of getting husband and wife out the door was effective, as they grabbed their things, loaded them into the car and were ready to go. "I'll get them there safely."

"You'd better," Coco replied, smirk on her face, "our daughter wants a cousin to play with, don't you Clemmy? 'Yes I do Mommy.' See?"

"I don't believe you sometimes," the Faunus laughed, surprised that her Mate just gave their child a voice to 'talk' to her with. It was kind of cute, even if the voice was a bit weird and off-putting. The little off-handed comment wasn't lost on Neo or Fox though, as they both registered it with a glance towards their other half. Velvet kissed both Coco and Clementine, then joined the holiday-bound couple in the car, sitting in the driver's seat as she was going to take them to their flight so that the three back at home had both their cars to use while Neo and Fox were away. "Right, let's get you two on holiday."

" ** _That_** _keen to get rid of us, eh Velvet?_ " Neo signed from the front passenger seat.

"Yup; it's going to be peace and quiet for a whole four days, and it'll be lovely." Fox chuckled as they reversed off their driveway, waving at their teammates as they left their view. "Next stop, the Airport."

* * *

Velvet got a wave from Fox and a kiss from Neo as they took all their things and left for their terminal. Going through all their checks and eventually getting to where they needed to be, when they looked at the ship carrying them to South-East Vacuo Airport, they commented on how it was a lot different to all the ships they had been on before when travelling up to Atlas or even to Mistral. Even with its large size and two levels, the vessel looked a lot less grand than the other Kingdoms' large passenger ships. While there is no way it could be, at the very least it _looked_ like it was pieced together in a functional, yet much more rag-tag, style - very akin to the rest of Vacuo, if Neo was to be completely honest. The dark browns and greys of the ship also gave it a much earthier colouring, with hints of a much brighter colour pallet underneath visible on occasion as they boarded the ship. It also was a lot less luxurious than the Atlas one (for good reason), but still came with beds for passengers to relax in, although the space was much tighter than before. The pair settled down to their bunk after the regular take off procedure had occurred.

' _Well, the holiday's on now,_ ' she commented, snuggling up close to her husband for warmth and comfort.

"Yeah. So, what's the first step?"

' _I think,_ ' she began, ' _that we need to talk about children. Then, once that's out of the way, we move onto the fun part of actually trying for children._ ' As she spoke about it, she walked her fingers up her husband's chest, playing with him and very strongly hinting at her own thoughts on the matter. ' _What do you think about that Fox?_ '

"I think," he answered with a grin, rolling over so that he lay on top of her, "that you've got a very good idea going."

' _I'm glad you think so,_ ' she replied with a smile, her slight glance down at his lips all the indication he needed to lean in and kiss her.

* * *

"I'm not betting," Velvet affirmed.

"Come on Cottontail, it's just a bit of fun."

"It's fun at our friends' and teammates' expense," she clarified, so no.

"You're just worried you're going to lose, aren't you?" Maggie joked. The Rabbit stared down the Arctic Fox, angry at the accusation thrown her way. "I'm not hearing a no~" she sang, still pushing the smaller Faunus' buttons.

"Velvs, even Yatsuhashi's gotten in on this one. C'mon, it's just a bit of fun."

"So you've said..." Chocolate brown eyes glanced around at the remaining three in the room. Clementine was, once again, taking a nap in her cot, so that left the three adults of the house alone. Maggie joined them soon after, and one of them suggested that they place some bets on Neo and Fox while away.

 _Determination._

Velvet glanced over at her Mate, taking a longer look at her than she did the others, wondering why she got that wave of emotions coming through. "Listen sweetie, we all know how competitive you can get from time to time. This is just the same sort of thing. Only difference - this one entirely plans on things out of our control. That's what makes this one so much more exciting!" She walked closer, leaning in to whisper something in her Rabbit ears. "And if you enter and win, I'll let you take charge for a whole week - if you catch my drift." Oh, Velvet caught her drift alright. Within an instant, the Rabbit's ears perked up in excitement and she placed her bets.

"I'm saying, 'Airship over there' and 'nineteen times'."

"Nineteen?!" Velvet nodded at her choice. "Wow, do you really not think they have any restraint at all?" Maggie asked. Then she scoffed playfully, adding, "and I thought _you_ were the one who had the Rabbit-like sexual tendencies."

"I do," she replied, not elaborating on which part of the Arctic Fox's sentence she was accepting as she got out her Lien and split it between the two envelopes they had in front of them on the table, "but I also think that they're going to take our words to heart regarding giving Clementine a cousin. They'll be trying a lot, and I think they'll try on the way over."

"If you say so hun," Coco replied with a shrug, sealing the envelopes and hiding them away from everyone, only to be touched when the pair returned.

* * *

Fox huffed from exhaustion as Neo leaned back on top of him, her bare back resting against his chest, both naked and sweaty from their most recent encounter. Neo shifted her weight slightly to rest on one side, turned her head and kissed her husband lovingly.

' _I love you. You know that, right?_ '

"Of course I do Neo. And I love you too." He removed himself from her and shifted their weights on their bed so that they could be comfortable, pulling the non-dirtied side of their cover over them so they had some semblance of decency about them.

' _At least they can't say we didn't try,_ ' the mute observed, resting her head on the pillow below. ' _We've already had you firing out of the gate twice now, and we haven't even touched down on Vacuo._ '

"As much as I want to say I didn't want that to happen, because come on-"

' _I think you mispronounced "in", Fox._ '

"Hush you. But seriously, what guy _wouldn't_ want to experience two so close together?"

' _An idiot. Something that you, clearly, are not._ '

"I will take that as a compliment." She smiled, and he leaned in to peck her on the cheek. "I'm unsure how you managed it, but it was fantastic."

The ice cream girl double tapped the side of her nose with a finger, saying how that was for ' _me to know, and you to never know. Unless you've expanded your sexual horizons. I'm sure Quentin would be grateful for someone at the moment, he seemed pretty lonely last time we spoke._ '

"Nah, I think I'll stick to the normal 'Guy & Girl' thing, if it's all the same to you; you can keep your sexual secret and your love for everyone." Satisfied with his answer, she nodded once in affirmation and settled down again next to him, wanting to rest now rather than do anything else. "But when did you speak to Quentin?"

' _Oh, about a week or so ago - I think you were out getting the groceries with Coco when he called. It was brief, but in that time, he managed to mention his lack of a partner. I have to say, he picked up Sign Language very fast, even in his two years mandatory service._ '

"Agreed. We need to make some time to see them again." She had the same thoughts, and they put the idea on the back burner so that they could discuss it at a later date. For now, they were focussed on relaxing before reaching their destination.

* * *

Yeah, I had fun with this part of the story. It's a little bit weird, I'll admit, but anything to move the story along, eh?

Also, thank y'all so much for 155 follows on the story. Holy hell, I never thought the story would gain the traction it has. But if you like this, can I recommend reading ' **Said The Blind Man** ' by **thisvexesme.** It's another Neo/Fox story, one grounded in far more realism than this one, but one of only a handful of stories for the pairing. Chapter 2 uploaded fairly recently, so you'll have two stories to read through today. Read it, tell 'em I sent you, add a smiley face at the end too - they're always nice.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	94. Welcome to Occulta

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Both Neo and Fox had been in fights before - it came as part of the job description of Huntsmen and Huntresses that you would undoubtedly be in fights; whether they be against Creatures of Grimm, or Bandits, or even other Huntsmen in friendly spars or full on battles. And, having been in many fights up to this point in their lives, they were fairly used to being hit. But when they got to the open door of the airship taking them to Lac Filio, they both agreed it was like being slapped in the face by a wave of uncompromising heat. Fox even stumbled slightly at the proverbial slap of heat.

Once checks were done and they had made it to the much smaller airships, both people were already sweating profusely in the extreme heat of the midday sun. The couple made their way to the district of Lac Filio their hotel was in - the Northernmost province of the city, Occulta - via Bullhead, receiving only a few odd glances from some locals. When they got to the hotel though, they were greeted by a much friendlier person at the hotel front desk.

"Welcome to the Occulta Hotel!" he began. The man was a Faunus, evident through his thick, armour-like plating covering his shoulders and back. An armadillo Faunus, with lightly tanned skin adorned with faint wrinkles that gave away his age, or at least his age bracket, and a rich brown head of hair. He didn't wear a shirt - his shell probably had something to do with that - but he did wear a pair of sand coloured trousers that looked fairly light and airy, perfect for weather conditions like these. "Ah, you must be Mr. and Mrs. Alistair, no?"

"We are, yes."

"Ah, good. Would you like me to take your things, madam?" She shook her head, asking Fox to say 'No thank you' to his request on her behalf.

"She says 'no thank you', Mr?... um..."

"Ulata. Cing Ulata. And forgive me, it might be my age creeping up on me, but I didn't hear anyone say anything."

"Oh, sorry. My wife is mute, but we can communicate with each other. That's why you didn't hear her."

The Armadillo gasped at his own initial ignorance, saying, "My dear, I am so sorry for that! If I had known, I wouldn't have asked. Please, forgive me."

"Cing, there's nothing to forgive you for. You didn't know, it's an honest mistake. No, we'll take our things to our own room, if you'd kindly direct us there."

"Second floor, Room 2H." They went to leave the lobby, but the Faunus crossed the gap between him and the couple surprisingly fast, grabbing onto the man's forearm, shocking both of them at his speed considering his advanced age. Neo's eyes even flashed ivory white at the shock. "You don't know what it means for someone to be cordial to me. Thank you."

"...Neo's asking if... well, I guess I'm asking too; are people usually mean to you?"

"Oh yes, a lot of the time they are. I know you outsiders say that 'In Vacuo, if you can survive here, you are welcome here' about us, and that is true. But that doesn't mean we are all nice to one another once we're here. Admittedly, it is only a select handful of people, but that's more than enough to cause disruption every which way you turn. And most of the foreigners such as yourselves are the main culprits. They come expecting great Vacuan hospitality, then ask us to bend over backwards to do things _their_ way, not ours. I can already tell, you two are going to be so much friendlier than the others."

' _Let me say this one._ ' Fox nodded slightly as Neo took out her Scroll and typed away.

 **We will do our best to stay out of your hair.**

"Oh no, no, no, please don't hesitate to ask myself or any of the staff to help you. It's what we're here for."

"We don't want to impose if you'd ra-"

"My boy," the older man simply said, resting his hand on the Huntsman's shoulder, "we folk here in Vacuo that are actually pleasant don't want you to have any misfortune during your... uh... why were you two here again?"

"Our belated anniversary."

"Ah yes, I remember now." With a small, almost self-pitying sigh, Cing continued. "Age really _is_ catching up to me. Anyway, we want you to enjoy your anniversary away, however belated it may be, and if that means helping you in any way we can, then we'll do it." Fox thanked the man for his words of wisdom and Neo silently bowed as they took their things up to their room.

It was decent in size, large enough to comfortably house both of them for the three nights they'd be staying here, with a queen size bed in the middle of the room next to the wall that housed their en suite bathroom. Courtesy of Velvet throwing a little of her own money in for the trip - they'd have to bring something special back for her - there was a small terrace on the far wall behind a glass sliding door, staring out onto the rest of the oasis. It wasn't the best sight; at least, not at the moment - supposedly, when the sun goes down and the night lights shine, the view is magnificent. And when night would eventually come around, they had it there to view at their leisure.

"So," Fox started, laying his bag down near the edge of the bed, "welcome to our room for the next three nights. We can unpack now; we can head out and get lunch in Lac Filio, we can explore the hotel itself quickly and maybe grab lunch in here; what do you want to do first?"

' _Is "you" an acceptable answer to the question?_ ' Tapping his chin, Fox pondered on that thought... for about three seconds. After that time had elapsed, he scooped Neo up bridal style with a large grin on his face.

"I think I can live with 'you' being an answer." Her own grin growing after the shock that proceeded, she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him carry her to their bed.

* * *

Three rounds, a shower and a combined unpacking and wardrobe change later, the couple headed out into the city. The overpowering midday heat got to the Vale couple, so they made notes to either carry around a couple of their Ice Dust shards to cool them down, or to just outright avoid going in direct sunlight during the peak sun time, but the much more manageable temperature at 3:00pm - as it was now - gave them both a chance to explore the city they'd be spending the next three days in without the Dust.

Unlike back in Vale, Lac Filio was in no way a seaside town. All of the oases - essentially what the majority of the locals called their sprawling cities - in Vacuo were situated further inland, with Lac Filio actually being the closest to the ocean, but said body of water was easily 10 miles away at its shortest point. What Lac Filio - specifically Occulta, as husband and wife both said that they weren't planning on wondering too far away from the hotel today - had to offer instead of things like fishing boats and promenades were things like trading posts on the outskirts of the oasis for people to check in and make sure they're safe, to lots of summer wear clothing stores. Even in the city with much taller buildings than they'd seen before in a typical town in Vacuo, things were still spaced out enough to not feel overly crowded like in a busier metropolis like Vale or Atlas.

"It's so different to Vale," Fox commented, taking in the sights around him. He was wearing a pair of burgundy chino shorts with navy slip on plimsolls and an open white shirt, topping the look off with his sunglasses that were now for a practical use as opposed to protecting him from the hypnotic effects of a weird squid Grimm. Neo too had changed, favouring a mint green spaghetti top and some mid-thigh length pale denim shorts, along with her own pair of sunglasses, a white sun hat and white pumps on her feet. She was taking pictures on her Scroll of anywhere that looked really interesting to her, some with Fox in as well as just some with the place or thing itself. Although she and Fox were on holiday for themselves, she always wanted to share their experience with the rest of their team back home. "Even in this part of the city, it's crazy to see how different all the buildings are."

' _Yup. But even then, for an oasis, this is surprisingly less refined than I thought it would be, especially in Occulta._ '

"What do you mean?"

' _I mean, when someone says that "Lac Filio is a sprawling oasis in the middle of the Vacuan deserts", would you picture a metropolis where everywhere is blossoming into a highly functioning place to live even in the harsh conditions they found themselves in, or a small city like this where the prosperous in the middle thrive and the edges are left to house the broken?_ '

' _I get where you're coming from Ni,_ ' Fox admitted, switching to his inner voice on the off chance that someone overheard and was less than happy about their conversation topic, ' _but aren't_ _ **all**_ _metropolises like that?'_

' _Yeah, I guess, But I did not expect it to be at this sort of level. There is such a clear divide between where all the Lien is clearly going in spades and where it's going on occasion. It just... doesn't feel right to me. Don't get me wrong, it's still a beautiful part of the city, it's just so polarising to see this against parts of the city centre._ '

' _It wasn't going to be perfect Neo,_ ' Fox tried assuring her, ' _I see where you're coming from, but Vacuo is still struggling with... well, everything. Extreme weather, mining towns running on fumes, Grimm attacks on the regular, depleting resources. These oases are trying their best, we knew that when we chose to come here._ ' She nodded, accepting what she heard not because she really wanted to, but because it seemed easier than the alternative of arguing with him. "Come on, let's go see what Vacuan ice cream tastes like, eh?"

' _Sure! I want the one with the lemon/lime and honeycomb, or macadamia nuts if they don't have those._ '

"Wow, that perked you up far better than I expected it to." She shrugged, linking her arm with his and walking off to go find an ice cream parlour.

* * *

Visiting different places opened up so many new possibilities for discovery. Vale is a hard "Middle of the Road" type Kingdom; the weather is always decent, the terrain mostly flat with varying areas of interest around, such as the Emerald Forest and Forever Fall, but also much hillier terrains on the outskirts of the Kingdom, and with generally average architectural designs. In contrast to that, Vacuo was very abstract in terms of how it dealt with not only its conditions - blistering days, Atlas-level cold nights - but also its architecture. Most places in Vacuo were tents and hastily constructed huts made for the ever-relocating populous of the Kingdom. Those places that were something more than that, specifically the Oases of Vacuo, had towering structures and such weird and wonderful ways of making them unique to all of their fellow Kingdom counterparts.

For example, right now Fox and Neo were lounging about on a sun chair each atop a seven storey high rise with a parasol shading them from the sun, the ice cream parlour the couple were searching for earlier a few metres behind them on the roof as well. Currently, they were overlooking the skyline of Occulta bathed in the golden light of the late afternoon sun, with an ice cream each in hand.

Fox got an ice cream called the Atlas Blast; a spearmint ice cream with trace amounts of blue raspberry in there to not only add the wintery blue colour, but to stop it from being just a pure spearmint ice cream. He had to admit, it was surprisingly delicious, given the odd combination of flavours used, and it was a cooling taste even before the ice cream to boot.

Neo got the lemon/lime and honeycomb ice cream she wanted, which here they called a Citrus Lancer, and was licking the dairy treat slowly as she and her husband stared out over the sights before them.

' _I'm glad we did this,_ ' she mused, her talking uninhibited by her eating because of her internal communication with him, ' _it's so peaceful up here, and the view is stunning._ '

"Yes, it is." Se instinctively turned towards him, and saw the tan skinned man staring directly at her with a beaming smile on his face. The response brought about a silent laugh and a roll of her eyes as she looked back out to the horizon. "Oh come on, you knew that was coming."

' _You say that a lot, but I'm still taken by surprise by what you do from time to time - am I not allowed to be surprised from time to time?_ '

"Well, yeah, of course. But through all the time we've been together, I've pulled that one so many times I thought you'd have wisened up to it by now."

The tri coloured girl lowered her sunglasses and shot him a look of playful scepticism, her eyes both shooting pink as she spoke to him. ' _Who says I haven't? I could have just been playing along for your own self pleasure, because you find it so endearing to see me fall for the same joke you've told basically since we started together back at Beacon._ ' The thought behind that stumped him for a moment, doing his best to see whether she was indeed telling the truth, or whether she just found a way of confu- ' _I'm just messing with you hun,_ ' she confirmed as she placed a kiss on his lips, having crossed the distance between their two sun chairs as he was lost deep in thought. ' _I did fall for it; have done basically every time you have done it. I know you're going to do it, it's almost like clockwork now, but I still fall every time._ '

Fox smiled, leaning up again to place a loving kiss on the tip of his wife's nose. She smiled back, responding by appropriating his ice cream, taking a small scoop of it with her finger and dolloping said scoop on Fox's nose, then promptly returning the ice cream before he could even respond. "Really?!" he cried, reeling back in shock at the action. Neo laughed silently, jumping back from him to give him room - mentally and physically - to process what had just occurred. A couple of other patrons looked over to see the scarred Huntsman rubbing the blue treat off his nose whilst another, his wife, was there smiling cheekily with an ice cream in one hand and the remnants of his on her other hand.

As Fox looked up at his wife, the mute smirked, her eyes swap their colours from the norm to the inverse as she licked the remaining ice cream she had off her fingers. But not normally in any way, she just _had_ to do it in the most seductive way she could imagine, even when they were both in public. The woman stuck her tongue out, the muscle extending towards her fingers as slowly as she dared go, with a smile never leaving her face. As she got closer, she moved the treat covered finger so that she could let her tongue circle around it, cleaning the whole tip as 'thoroughly' as she could. Then, she took her finger and finally cleaned the treat off completely, sticking most of it in her mouth to clean it, before pulling said finger out again with a satisfying pop, a small sliver of saliva bridging the gap between mouth and digit.

No sooner had she finished that did she find herself scooped into Fox's arms. ' _Going somewhere, are we?_ '

' _Back to the room. Someone's been incredibly suggestive with her eating habits, and frankly, it's gotten me riled up a bit._ ' He made sure that he had both his Scroll and Neo's on him before starting to walk off.

' _Oh? Feeling a little raunchy are we lover boy?_ '

' _Why don't we get back to the room and find out?_ '

' _And you're willing to take the slow, painful elevator ride down to ground level, and haul me like this all the way across Occulta, just to get in my panties_ _ **again**_ _?_ ' He slowed down to a pace that was barely moving at all after hearing that, her logic undeniably truthful. ' _As sweet as that is, I've got a better idea._ ' No verbal acknowledgement came from Fox, simply a raised eyebrow, as he tightened his hold around his wife. Feeling his strong hands around her thighs, she used that cue to not only wrap her own arms around his neck, but also to teleport away from the roof they were on to the furthest away she could manage from here, back towards their hotel nearer the opposite edge if Occulta. They didn't leave without a trace though, as a piece of paper drifted on the warm air towards the owner of the rooftop business, who had seen what he believed was an altercation between customers that he needed to break up, only for them to seemingly reconcile and disappear, leaving only the note behind.

 **'To the Owner'** , it read,

 **'We both** **loved** **what you have done here. We're from Vale, so seeing something like this was refreshing and it really lifted our spirits.**

 **So, as a gift, we left you 1,000 Lien for your trouble and service. We also left 500 Lien to pay it forward. Anything from single, small items over multiple transactions to giant orders, your transactions for the next 500 Lien have been covered by us!**

 **Yours,**

 **Fox and Neo Alistair, Vale Huntsmen'** The man couldn't quite believe his eyes; true to their word, there were 2 piles of Lien waiting for him spot by these strangers, those he now knew as Vale Huntsmen.

Said Huntsmen had been teleporting back towards their room a few times before Aura exhaustion caused Neo to stop and pant like air was a rare commodity at this point. Even now, at 16:30, the air was hot and sticky in her mouth and breathing hurt, and whilst she managed to cover a fair amount of ground and could see their hotel from the rooftop they were on, they had a fair way to go.

"You know, with the benefit of hindsight, teleporting constantly to get back sooner really wasn't the smartest idea you've had." He let her go, the mute dropping to her hands and knees to lessen the strain on her lungs. "Especially as you're teleporting from rooftop to rooftop."

Neo turned to glare at the man beside her, uttering a mental ' _Fuck you_ ' as she still tried to swallow her breaths.

"Well, with how you're currently positioned, I'd be inclined to think you were willing already." She turned to see herself, realising that she did indeed look rather provocative the way she was. Not wanting to give him a glimmer of hope - at least, not until the hotel - she let her arms and legs succumb to the exhaustion and flopped straight onto the rooftop, rolling over onto her back for ease of breathing as well.

' _As much as I love you and what we're trying to achieve with having children, must we turn_ _ **everything**_ _this week into an opportunity to have sex? I mean, you know I'm not complaining about the sex in any way, you're fantastic-_ '

"Why thank you, I aim to please."

Neo rolled her eyes before continuing. ' _-but this is supposed to be a trip for ourselves. I know sex is a part of our relationship, but so far we've spent so much time on this trip thinking about sex or dealing with things around sex that it's already starting to become a little stale for me._ ' Listening to what she had to say, and not wanting her to feel left out, Fox also lay down on the rooftop, the cream coloured tiles reflecting light from below them to make it shine brilliantly in the late afternoon sun. ' _We have multiple days to ourselves with no Coco, no Velvet, no Yatsu, no missions, no distractions. Just us and Lac Filio. Can't we enjoy this city, experience things it has to offer, rather than each other's intimate company?_ '

"Yeah, sure," he agreed. "I mean, we can do that any time we want, can't we?"

' _I take it by "that", you're actually meaning "each other"?_ '

"More or less. How often are we going to come back to Vacuo, missions excluded?" Rhetorical question, something Neo picked up on as she simple glanced over at Fox. "I think you and I should do a lot of exploring tomorrow. We'll have a good rest tonight-" Neo mentally guffawed at that; knowing where her mind currently was and where Fox's had been, sleep probably wasn't going to happen for a while after they'd gotten back, "-then we can go to the far side of the city and see what we can do over there tomorrow. Then maybe the day after we can sleep in later and explore the city at night time, see the lights of Lac Filio. That'll give us our last day to do a little bit of souvenir shopping, unless we can fit that in on any other day."

' _Sounds like a plan._ ' The tri coloured woman leaned across and placed her hand out to one side, a gesture Fox mirrored, grabbing her hand in his own as they lay there peacefully. ' _One quick question though._ '

"Hm?"

' _How are we meant to get down from here?_ '

Fox's dark copper brown eyes widened, his neck snapped up to stare around him and he, too, asked himself, "How _are_ we meant to get down from here?" Neo couldn't teleport for a while, not if she'd exhausted her Aura completely. To make sure she wasn't bluffing, though she never has with something like this before, Fox checked on his Scroll. Yup, 1% Aura; she had barely made it here without it breaking. She didn't have her parasol with her either, so they couldn't float down to the ground, or at the absolute least a lower building. Fox's Aura could most likely survive the fall on his own, at worst it would only just make it. But having to brace against the added impact with Neo in his arms would shatter his Aura and leave them both completely drained without any hope of making it back to the hotel, and with Fox nursing at the very least two shattered legs and probably paralysis from the hips downwards. The best they could do at this point was wait it out, and he relayed that to Neo as best as he could without things sounding too bleak.

' _Well then,_ ' she said, rolling over and straddling her husband, not seeing the bleak side at all, ' _it's a good thing that air traffic in Vacuo is pretty low then, isn't it? And that my Aura broke on the tallest building in Occulta._ ' She smirked, removing her top and bra, leaving her chest free to the world. ' _I can't say I've ever had sex atop a building before. Have you?_ ' she queried, knowing full well that she was his first and that - even counting the handful of group… experiences that they, Coco, Velvet and others on occasion have had - she had been there every single time he has had sex.

"I don't think I ever have either. Looks like we can add that to the list as yet _another_ thing you can claim to have been my first for." Neo didn't wait around much longer, her hand trailing down Fox's body as her face leaned down to passionately kiss him.

* * *

Yeah, it's getting a bit more explicit with the suggestiveness. Don't really care - it's what I wrote and I'm not changing it.

Also, Fox got some backstory on an Amity Arena card - an orphan from Vacuo who found his family in Team CFVY. Coincidental then, isn't it, that he and his wife just so happen to be arriving in Vacuo at this very instant, eh?

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	95. Early Rise, Mid-morning Surprise

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Breakfast that was served the following morning was plentiful. For a Kingdom commonly known for its sparsity, seeing what their definition of a grand feast would be was truly spectacular. Food started to be served at around 6:00am, which seemed ridiculous in most circumstances and for most Kingdoms, the military-styled Atlas Academy being an obvious exception. But for Vacuans, having breakfast this early meant that the Kingdom's inhabitants could go out and enjoy their days before the sun got too high in the sky and made everyone sweaty and unwilling to do anything.

There were some exceptions, such as the few brave/stupid aquatic Faunus had who ventured out to what amounted to a giant desert Kingdom for a different life, taking their refuge in the pools and fountains for a few hours every day to save themselves from frying, and the Tortoise Faunus that amble along slowly but are protected by their large shells on their backs. Also, the couple spotted a family of Jerboa Faunus yesterday, a rare rodent Faunus with long, almost kangaroo like legs that often bury themselves in the sand during the warmer hours of the day. It is quite comical to see a family of people suddenly digging themselves out from being underground, having not been seen for hours on end.

"So, what's the plan for today?" Fox queried before munching down on a fried egg he'd sandwiched between two slightly-toasted pieces of bread.

' _I say we go right to the far side of Lac Filio,_ ' his wife answered, eating once again not stopping a conversation from happening. Fox was jealous she could do that. That was, until his brain caught up with him and he remembered that _he_ could do that too. ' _We can explore the area further, hopefully we can find something not too expensive to do during peak sun time, then we can explore a little more in the afternoon before heading back later._ '

' _I like the sound of that._ '

' _I'd hope so,_ ' she mentioned, ' _because that's the only option you're getting today._ ' The tan skinned man paused where he was, his mouth open and awaiting the bite of food he was about to take, but his eyes narrowed instead. Their intended target, the smug looking Neo sat opposite, simply grinned as the runny yolk of his fried egg sandwich oozed out onto his lap. ' _I hope you weren't planning on going out in that,_ ' she asked innocently, ' _we wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea now, would we?_ '

"You're incorrigible."

' _Guilty,_ ' she replied, happily taking another bite of her breakfast.

* * *

The sight of large crowds of people greeted the couple as they departed from the Bullhead ride over to the far side of Lac Filio. This new province, Ignotis, contained so many different things that the couple wouldn't have associated with a place like Vacuo, not that there was anything wrong with that. There were large areas for shows and performances, recreational park areas that could be used by adults and children alike - though it didn't have any real grass there for reasons the couple could only assume to be "too hot, grass would die instantly", so it was either covered in fake grass or that multi-coloured rubber tarmac. But what surprised them most was the insanely large shopping mall that occupied the vast majority of the central area of Ignotis.

' _How did we_ _ **not**_ _see this on the flight in?_ ' Neo managed after a long bout of nothing but silent staring. Fox glanced up, noticing the tips of trees - real or not, he'd yet to decide - atop the large structure along with what appeared to be some other foliage.

"I have an idea, but we'll need to go up and check to see if I'm right. In the meantime, let's have a wonder around the rest of Ignotis before we go into the mall." Neo nodded without taking her eyes off the building until she absolutely needed to, and even after the pair rounded a corner and into the first of many shops, they were bound to go in today Neo still kept her heterochrome eyes trained on where the imposing structure was.

The first store Fox walked into was a pharmaceutical store of sorts - not the sort of place he would have immediately gone to, but in his defence, he was just going into the first place around to get Neo to focus on something other than the mall. The store itself was small, an intimate establishment positioned with a major corner store and a clothes shop either side it, and housed very few items to sell - on the shop floor, at least. Judging by the fact the vast majority of the items on store were in empty and open bottles, whoever owned the store had a large stockpile out back of what he needed.

"Greetings," came a voice from behind the counter, surprising Fox so much he let out a little cry and instinctively clenched his fists, subsequently squeezing Neo's hand that the pain brought her out of the trance he was in.

' _Ow,_ ' she said casually whilst simultaneously giving him a long hard look of "you shouldn't have done that, now I'm annoyed at you". He knew he'd messed up the second he heard her relaxed tone and contrasting, harsh look of irritation she gave him.

"I'm going to have to make it up to you, aren't I?" he asked her, almost rhetorically. She didn't actually provide him with an answer, just a simple nod of the head back towards the voice.

"Welcome to Malum, how may I help you today?"

"Oh... um... could... could we speak to... the person in charge? Please?" Fox managed, acting poorly under the sudden pressure. Neo reminded herself to politely scold him about that later.

"That would be me sir."

"Oh." The person they now knew to be the owner of the shop - a small woman with a slight tan to her skin, a soft voice and dark hair, most likely originally hailing from one of Anima's many small villages - approached them slowly yet purposefully. Fox hesitated less this time, hearing the ever so slight disappointment in his wife's inner voice after the whole stuttering and pausing fiasco ten seconds earlier. "My apologies madam."

"Do not fret, mistakes happen. Now, how may I help?"

"We were just... uh..."

' _Do you think she's got anything pregnancy related?_ '

' _...that's actually a decent shout, it'll save me stuttering like a fool again._ '

' _Don't need stuttering to do that._ '

' _Ha, ha._ ' "...looking for a couple of things. We've recently started trying for children, so we were looking for things like pregnancy tests and the like, and we were wondering if you had something like that in here."

"Yes sir, please wait one moment." The owner left to go out back, leaving husband and wife in store.

"Thanks for the save there Ni," he sighed as they went exploring around the shop, "I don't know what I'd do without you sometimes."

' _Fall flat on your face, be sad and lonely, die; there are a number of options._ ' Fox just stared back.

"Really? _Really?_ Of all the things, you went with _that_ as your answer. You know, I was trying to be sincere there, why did you have to flip the morbid switch?"

' _It felt appropriate,_ ' was her three word answer.

"Is this about your hand? 'cause if it is, I'm sorry." He found a small bottle that made him giggle at both the name and desired effects. He held it in his hand to pass on to the woman when she returned.

' _I'm just being honest. If I didn't try and pursue you, or if one or neither of us went for that Parchment back at Beacon, you probably would have remained pining over Velvet, or on certain missions you would have died if it weren't for me. No, I'm just being truthful._ '

"You're being blunt, is what you are. Are you feeling okay?"

' _I'm fine Fox, just... just a little warm maybe. It's nothing._ '

"Uh huh." He didn't believe it, but he'd play along. The owner came back out with a couple of boxes of pregnancy tests in tow.

"There we are, two boxes of tests. Sometimes, people want to check a lot, so I gave you two." The older woman's eyes suddenly narrowed, almost glaring at Neo. Fair to say, the Huntress was a little weirded out, a feeling amplified when said store owner suddenly approached her and invaded her personal space.

' _Fox, a little help please!_ '

"Hey, what's going on here?" he asked, sticking his arm between his wife and this woman. "Why do you think it's a good idea to approach my partner like that?" The woman, without so much as looking at Fox, opened her palm towards him. His body suddenly glowed with an orange light - the light of his own Aura - as the woman's body shone with the glow of her own purple Aura and he was lifted off the floor. Without so much as uttering a single word, she pointed off to one side, and Fox body floated over in that direction, knocking into one stand as he moved.

Neo, not wanting to stand around and do nothing, lowered her stance and went in for an attack. The woman's hands returned to her side, going in for a similar sort of strike at Neo, but the ice cream woman had baited the woman to take that strike. She was much faster than this woman without her semblance, so with it she was untouchable. The second her hands started to move, Neo teleported behind the woman and landed a swift kick to the old woman's side. She stumbled, as any ordinary person would when kicked by a Huntress who specialised in kicks for hand to hand combat, but was up and facing the mute within seconds.

"You should not have hit me, Mrs. Alistair," she stated. The name drop stunned both people with that surname in the shop, but Neo wasn't going to let tactics like that distract her from the fact this woman had attacked her and her husband before they had finished doing business with her. Neo went in again, more of a cautious approach than usual for her, but if this person knew who she and Fox were by name then she couldn't take chances. Neo advanced again, and waited once more for the strike to commence. As she saw it, the teleported did her thing and blinked to another spot around her.

To her utter shock, this woman had predicted the movement, as she only teleported to the left side of the woman as she was performing a left handed palm strike to where Neo was standing, and thrust her palm into the centre of Neo's chest. She silently gasped as this woman's purple Aura and her own multi-coloured on both lit the area up. The palm lowered centring more on the mute's actual tummy area. Neo said nothing, she _did_ nothing, because this woman was not hurting her and so did not pose a threat. That, and she somehow managed to freeze her in place so that she couldn't escape in any way, be it teleporting or simple moving.

"I have a semblance too; I can manipulate people's Auras if I want to, but mostly I just read them through physical contact. I can understand basic things like names with even the slightest touch, more as the contact time increases." She focused back on Neo, reading her Aura for a few more seconds before letting her go and removing her hand, panting afterwards. It turns out, using that sort of semblance is incredibly taxing.

"So," Fox said as he made his way around the toppled stand and knocked over glass vials to get back to the woman and Neo, "care to clear up what you just did to my wife?"

"I have done nothing to her, I simply read her body and Aura. It intrigued me, for it appeared abnormal in my mind's eye." She looked back at Neo, then to Fox with the following part of the apology. "I am sorry for shocking you, and to you for throwing you across my store. I wanted to check her completely and the less interruptions I get while doing so, the better."

"Right. And so, are we still expected to pay full price for these, considering you threw me through your shop?"

"Yes." That wasn't exactly the answer Fox, or Neo for that matter, wanted, and their faces reflected that immediately. "But I will give you a small amount of what you desired in that bottle as compensation, Mr. Alistair."

"Yeah, thanks." The woman left again to fill up that bottle. The couple remained there in silence, picking up the stand and trying to rearrange the small bottles on its shelf. The woman returned to see everything back the way it was before, with a couple of small mistakes here and there. Fox paid for it and went to leave with Neo to do some actual shopping.

"Mrs. Alistair?" The mute pivoted to look back, as did the scarred man. The woman's body glowed again, the same purple light as before, clearly using her semblance. "You and this Kingdom are very much alike. You once had life and the ability to make more, but now you are the barren wasteland with no hope of escaping what you are. But there is always a shiny ray of hope in even the most barren of places." The words spoken weren't exactly the friendliest things to hear when departing a store, so they simply said thanks and took their leave.

* * *

Yes, there is a short woman with dark skin and dark hair in here. No, I did not change that after Volume 6 aired and Maria became everyone's favourite Grandma. Yes, it is _entirely_ coincidental. Moving on.

Be on the lookout in two weeks' time, something special is occurin' ;)

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	96. Poor Customer Service

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

' _That bitch called me a desert,_ ' she aggressively mused after they'd cleared a block or two. ' _Why the hell would you say_ _ **that**_ _to a customer? It's like she doesn't want us coming back, or anyone coming back for that matter._ '

"What do you think she meant by that?" Neo glanced over at her husband, clearly still in thought over the woman's musings.

' _Why does it matter? She's gone from our lives, we move on._ '

"'A barren wasteland with no hope of escape' - ominous..." he muttered, still not sure what to make of the warning, if it was indeed one.

The couple spent the rest of the morning searching around other stores, buying a few things here and there, and saving the locations of a couple of other really good stores for that evening. But as the sun approached its peak, the couple could see a few people already scuttering inside to escape the blistering heat of the day, and they opted to do the same. They made their way to the mall they passed on landing, checking again at the landing pads when the last flight out was, before making their way inside.

Vacuo had their oases, such as the city they were in, but even _they_ had their own little gems, and the couple agreed that this was most likely a strong contender of being Lac Filio's. The mall was enormous; even from the entrance they could hardly see halfway down the perfectly straight pathway to the centre feature of the place. Each of the five floors of the place had to offer were teaming with life, from casual shoppers to those on their midday lunch breaks, families and individuals alike, and with so much variety on every floor. It was a wonderland of shopping.

' _Holy shit..._ ' the illusionist commented, her eyes flickering through all the possible combinations of their three main colours at every opportunity they could as she stared at the place, ' _Holy. Shit._ '

"It's rare to see you lost for words," Fox commented, "but I'm with you. This place is huge!" They moved in towards a giant screen near the entrance, looking almost like a public transport timetable, only with store names instead of destinations. "Why would you even need to go anywhere else? This looks like it's got everything in here." They searched on the board, finding various different places they wanted to go and taking note of their position in this mammoth of a building, before finally searching for a place to eat so that they could do their afternoon shopping spree on full stomachs. Fox managed to note down an elevator that lead to the roof as well, as he wanted to see what was up there to understand why they didn't see this thing flying in.

The small restaurant they found was situated near the middle on the third floor, a perfect place for them to plan their route around the mall as it was right near the middle of the place. Even though they ate, Fox opting for a bacon omelette and Neo a fishcake dish, each with salad sides, and were on their anniversary holiday away, the Huntsman and Huntress couldn't exactly be turned off in them. They were still planning this like it was a mission, prioritising and going for optimum routes, even the odd contingency plan should a couple of the shops not cater to what they wanted. Neo realised this and called them up on it, to which they both just laughed.

"Huntsmen 'til the end, eh?"

' _Yeah, it seems that way._ '

After eating, and even after criticising themselves for making a plan for their route, they did follow through with it anyway, but taking their time a bit more than they had planned to. Fox reminded Neo that, if they still wanted to come back here and finish off shopping, they had the morning they were flying back to Vale to do so. They stopped in clothes stores, in gift shops, antique stores and couple of mother and daughter stores. They had to explain to a couple of the store clerks that whilst they were trying themselves for children, this was actually for their friends back home who already had a child. Plus, they didn't think they could carry this much or something that big on the ship back when they had looked at things like buggies, even with their added weight allowance for weapons and the like. Eventually, they neared the end of their trip, having covered most of the shops they'd wanted to in little under three and a half hours, with a couple of bags in tow. Fox lead Neo to the last elevator, saying that this one would get them down to the ground floor quickest. In actuality, it was the one that went up to the roof.

The doors opened up, and Neo's eyes widened and swapped to dual pink. The roof of the shopping mall had been converted into a natural coastal area of sorts, with palm trees decorating the area to add shade but also green to the area and a main pool of crystal blue water. The rest of the area had more fake grass around to give the area some more greenery, only this time it was much less lawn length and looked slightly more like a natural meadow of sorts, with longer grass you'd have to wade through if it wasn't for the paths, wild flowers originally from Vacuo and some non-native species as well, although those were sparse to prevent them from becoming an invasive species. Nearer the pool of water it became less grassland and more beach, with pebbles and sand, the latter most likely from the rest of the desert surrounding them but it seemed so much... softer, even from a glance.

' _Talk about having a stylish roof. This is amazing. I don't think even_ _ **Atlas**_ _has things like this._ '

"The temperature's too cold up there for something like this, even in Southern Atlas. I reckon Vacuo can get away with it because of the temperature and their desire to not be living in a desert." Neo acknowledged that he was probably right on that one. They wondered around the area for a bit and were blown away by the sheer size of it, considering the area was covering most, if not all, of the roof of the giant mall. There were a couple of vendors on the rooftop as well, one for ice cream - which naturally they _had_ to go to - and one for coconut water.

"I... can't say _I've_ ever had coconut water. Neo?" A shake of the head was his answer, as she needed to convey the message to the vendor as well.

"It's not much different to regular water, but it's good for the body. And with _these_ coconuts," he indicated to his stash, stored behind him in what appeared to be barrels of a strange glowing substance, "you'll feel so much more energised that you ever thought you could be."

"Really?"

' _Fox, you don't believe that, do you?_ '

"Yes, my friend. Want to try some?" Fox wanted to say yes, but Neo was beside him eying the barrel suspiciously. He decided he'd trust his wife on this one.

"Yes." Wait... ' _Shit!_ '

"Thank you very much sir, 15 Lien." He reluctantly handed the Lien over and the vendor readied his knife to cut open the fruit, but Fox stopped him, on Neo's request.

"Wait, can I just take the coconut now? I have my own blade to open it with."

"No sir, I must open it now. It'll only take a moment." With that, he swung, not waiting for another counter argument. The mute grumbled to herself as the drink was prepared, and to both of their eyes nothing was wrong or weird about the whole process, it was just a man making a living selling coconuts... that had been sitting in a glowing substance.

"What's in the barrel?" Fox asked.

"Can't say sir. Trade secret."

"Is it Dust? Because that looks like liquidised Dust. Which one? Is it Ice Dust?"

"Trade secret sir. Although I will say that it isn't Dust of any kind." With the coconut opened and the straw and little umbrella added, Fox was handed his drink.

"Why's it cold? I thought you said that wasn't Dust."

"It isn't sir; there are Dust coolants _underneath_ the barrel that keep the liquid in there cool, but nothing is _in_ the barrel itself. Enjoy your drink, _sir_." With that harsh final comment, the man turned and went back to work on the rest of his wears, leaving the Huntsmen feeling a little sour at the send-off, if you could call it such.

' _Well, remind me never to come here again._ '

' _Don't come here again._ '

' _I didn't mean remind me now Neo, I meant in the future._ '

She shrugged. ' _You weren't specific enough._ ' He rolled his eyes, then took a sip of the drink he'd gotten. To her surprise, his face lit up a little. ' _Is it good?_ '

' _Yeah it is. Want to try-_ '

' _No._ ' She cut him off before he got a chance to finish his question. ' _Fox, I'm not going to dissuade you from drinking the rest of this, seeing as you paid for it and only took one sip, but if that thing_ _ **is**_ _bad I would rather one of us be safe to make sure it's nothing fatal._ '

"Always thinking of the bigger picture," he admitted, seeing his own flaw in that respect. He took another sip before looking down at the bags around him. "Uh..."

' _You want I should take a couple of bags?_ '

"Yes please," he said after a second or two of trying to assess whether he could take the bags on his own - he concluded that he couldn't.

' _Sure. But first._ ' Without much warning, she spun around and pulled her Scroll out from seemingly nowhere, although Fox wouldn't have put it past her to have had it in her hand this whole time and that she'd just created an illusion to make it seem like she wasn't, and snapped a quick photo of the pair of them. She was smiling, framed perfectly in the bottom left of the shot, whereas he just looked shocked with a small bit of coconut water splashing out of its natural cup as he tried to position it a little more naturally before the shutter closed. ' _There, all good._ '

"I probably look ridiculous in that photo," he commented.

' _Probably, yeah. But not all of our holiday photos can be perfect, scripted shots of us. Sometimes, it pays to have a little spontaneity._ ' He raised his coconut to that, as if it were a toast.

* * *

"I'm starting to get the impression that the coconut man lied." The couple had returned to their room at the end of the day, having finished up at the mall and made their way back to the hotel, grabbing some dinner in the restaurant once they had dumped their gifts back in the room. Right now, having been fed up nicely and put everything away, they were both lying on their bed in their room. Fox was simply staring at the ceiling waiting for something to happen still in his clothes for the day, whilst Neo was on her Scroll searching something in her sleepwear, the coconut on the nearby table for her to look at and work with if she needed to. Though to be honest, with her illusions and even after five years of being together, he couldn't always tell if she was actually wearing clothes or had just created an illusion to give off the impression she had. It made for entertaining walks through Vale on occasion.

' _What gave you that impression,_ ' she asked sarcastically, not taking her eyes off the screen, ' _the shadiness of how he sold you the drink? The way he kept it fresh? The absurd claim? It's one of those._ '

"Well, more the fact that I feel no different at all. Sure, those things he said did raise flags, but in the end, I wanted to try some coconut water."

Neo's Scroll flashed, the results coming in from her little test she'd sent off. Weiss had asked for CFVYN's help with something about five months ago, and in return she would see what she could do with the limited access to the Schnee Dust Company Reserves she had. Neo was cashing in on that favour. ' _You might want to lay off it from now on._ ' The tan skinned man sat up, looking at the screen in front of his partner. ' _Weiss sent me the results back already - these SDC guys are good._ '

"Well, they've probably had Weiss' permission to borrow your Time Dust shard tricks to improve their time efficiency, and she does have 'Schnee' as a surname, so they'd do a lot for their bosses."

' _Not for much longer,_ ' the tri coloured woman reminded, ' _their wedding's at the end of the year._ '

"Oh yeah. We are going, right?"

' _Stupid question, of course we are. Anyway, turns out that there really is no effects on the coconut water when either submerged in or cooled by Ice Dust. But one thing that was noticed was the drinks effects on cells short term, potentially long term according to the readings and data._ ' Neo opened one of the side documents labelled "Effects". ' _It says here that in short term, frozen on heavily chilled coconut water can temporarily damage the sex cells of either males or females, though slightly more potent on women-_ '

"Good thing you didn't have any then; wouldn't want our efforts over the past couple of days to be wasted."

' _-but long term it can affect the health of the same sex cells, the long term negative effects being greater on_ _ **male**_ _cells than female ones._ '

"Oh... not touching that stuff again!"

' _That's only short term stuff after lots and lots of ice cold coconut water; one isn't going to hurt you._ '

"Yeah," he reached across to cup her cheek in his hand, "but if it's going to destroy our chances of having children, then I'm not touching it again." Neo smiled, leaning in and pressing her lips on his own.

' _Shall we call it a night? We've still got a couple of things we can do tomorrow, and then the flight home's in two days' time._ '

"I thought tonight was going to be 'nightlife night'."

' _That's tomorrow, numb nuts._ ' She accentuated her statement by lightly bonking his head with her Scroll. ' _You definitely need some sleep._ ' She gazed towards their window as he nodded in agreement, spying the lights of the night shining from between the gap in the curtains. ' _But what's the harm in having a look out this evening._ ' She shuffled herself out of bed, walking over to the window and throwing the curtains open revealing the shine of Lac Filio's night.

From the window, the darkness of the cloudless night was completely cancelled out by the bright, luminous glows of the buildings below. Signs lit up streets, advertising something new on each and every one they could see, the streets all washed in an icy blue light from the lamps - they were implemented to lessen the violent tendencies of the populous by having a calming blue light over them as opposed to a harsh, angrier golden coloured light - and the buildings all glowed with their own signature colours.

"It's beautiful," he commented, staring out at the city. Their room wasn't too high up so they couldn't see as much as they would a floor or two higher, but the sight was still spectacular nonetheless.

' _Thank you, I try to please you. But what about the view?_ '

"Isn't that normally my line?" the man chuckled, averting his eyes away from the window and towards his wife.

Another shrug, along with a smirk. ' _Go get changed for bed._ '

"Yes Mom." Neo smacked his arm semi-playfully, making it clear to him that she wasn't joking; he obliged to her request. "So, are we going to sleep in tomorrow?" he asked as he changed, his back to her out of respect for privacy despite them being _very_ familiar with each other's naked bodies by this point. "I know that if we want to go out tomorrow evening, it may be an idea to sleep in so that we've got some... time to... prepare..." He had to admit, he wasn't expecting that.

Having changed into sleepwear, Fox spun back to the bed to get in and sleep, only to be greeted with his wife laying very seductively on the bed.

' _What's wrong sweetie?_ '

"Oh nothing, it's just there appears to be an incredibly sexy lady posing on the bed in our room."

' _Really?! What's she wearing?_ ' Fox got closer to the bed, lowering his voice so that it became husky, almost lust fuelled.

"Hopefully nothing, if she'll let me."

' _Is she hot?_ '

"Yeah she is."

' _Describe her for me, I might take an interest in her._ ' Neo closed her eyes, adding to the idea of this mystery woman actually being in the room. Fox played along.

"Well, she's got a great ass-"

' _Mm hm._ '

"-fantastic hips-"

' _Ooh, I like her._ '

"- a smile to die for-"

' _Sweet as well? She sounds so much fun._ '

"- and she appears to have lost her sense of spacing."

' _What's that got to do with-_ ' When her eyes opened, she was greeted with the sight of Fox standing right in front of her, their noses practically touching. As any person naturally would in this situation, even a hardened Huntress like Neo, she recoiled a bit at the sudden closeness.

"Gotcha," he smirked.

' _Oh shut up,_ ' she grinned, finally foregoing the stupid back and forth they had going and ended up just pulling him down.

* * *

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of coconut water. It just tastes... off.

I've been hinting at what I'm dropping next week, but for the clearest hint I can muster without flat out saying it, check Chapter 48. I mention it pretty explicitly there.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	97. Favours from a Schnee

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Fox knew this anyway, as did Neo, but sex _really_ takes a lot out of you. Sure, the feelings you get during and after are unmatched by any positive emotion they've ever felt, but that doesn't mean the exhaustion doesn't factor in. So when the pair eventually stirred from their slumber, they woke to strong and vibrant yellow light streaming through their curtain as opposed to the softer orange they had woken to yesterday in the pre-dawn.

' _Do I even want to know?_ ' were the first words Fox heard that morning, although neither moved.

"I'm not sure. I know I don't. But..." He reached for his Scroll to check the time. A mistake had been made. "Oh, fuck me."

' _Pass; I'm all fucked out._ ' He showed Neo the Scroll so that she could see the time. A second mistake. ' _Fuck off. That's... urgh._ '

 **13:16**

"How does that even happen? We've never-" he tried to sit up, but everything hurt. Still he persisted, eventually coming to an upright position. "-oh, crap that hurts. Ow. We've never slept in like that before. Like, _ever_."

' _That's so weird._ ' She too sat up, and although she did so with much fewer problems than her husband, it was not painless. ' _Never, in all the years I've done that, have I ever felt so... I dunno, slow and drained are probably the bests word for it. And it has never hurt this bad either._ '

"Agreed." Fox tried stretching his neck out, leading to a loud crack coming from it. "Argh!"

' _Jeez, you okay hun?_ '

"No..." he whined. A quick look over towards his wife, originally to see the sympathetic look he expected her to be wearing, only to be more interested by her Scroll flashing. "Neo sweetie, were you expecting a message today?"

' _I wasn't, why do you-_ ' she saw the flashing light in the corner of her Scroll and reached over to grab it. ' _Fox, it's from Weiss again._ '

"Why'd she need to contact you again?"

' _Beats me._ '

"I hope that she doesn't, otherwise I will need to be having words with Ms. Schnee."

' _Oum, that makes her sound like my mistress, and therefore someone who_ _ **would**_ _beat me._ ' The copper haired Huntsman was going to comment, but he realised how true her statement was, so he opted against saying anything. ' _Dust damnit..._ '

"What's she said?"

 ** _5 Unread Messages_**

 **W - 'Neo, it's Weiss again. The scientists at the SDC Labs ran a few more tests regarding the coconut water and Dust after I'd left and found something else out.**

 **'Due to one of the many convoluted ways of producing Time Dust being to work heavily on modifying Ice Dust, a process I cannot divulge due to SDC regulations and the fact I would rather get some sleep tonight, they discovered that the natural compounds of the water mixed directly with the Dust created small Time Dust particulates that could potentially slow down your nervous system for a few hours.**

 **'I assume due to lack of communication that what I said is probably the case, so I'm going to be going to bed. Please keep me posted on what happened.**

 **'Ruby says hi.**

 **'Neo, it's morning here and I've heard nothing from you. Has something happened?'**

"You might want to reply to that, we don't want SDC personnel raiding our room to make sure we're safe."

' _True._ '

 **N - 'Hey Weiss x**

 **'So, you were right. It definitely feels like Time Shards. We slept for well over 15 hours and are both in pain. Fox more than me'**

 **W - 'Well, it's nice to know that you're not dead.**

 **'Wait, why are you hurting? Wasn't Fox the only one of you that had some of that coconut water?'**

 **N - 'He was.**

 **'I was drinking a different kind of nut last night ;)'**

"Oh, she is going to hate that," came Fox's worried response at seeing his wife's comment to the Schnee.

' _It's fine, she's grown up a bit since Beacon, I'm sure she can handle a little innuendo here and there._ ' The pair were surprised when Neo's Scroll started ringing, and seeing that it was from Weiss. Confused but not willing to pass up the opportunity to communicate with her again after not seeing her for a while, Neo held the Scroll at arm's length so that she and Fox could be seen, then she opened the video call.

"Hey Weiss, how are-"

* _YOU SENT THAT TO MY WORK SCROLL!_ * she howled at them causing the mute to nearly drop the device from pure shock.

* _Weiss, not so loud,_ * came Ruby's voice from beside her, * _you said you weren't going to be harsh on them._ *

* _I know what I said Ruby, this_ _ **is**_ _me being lenient._ *

"Hey... Weiss," Fox tried again.

* _What were you thinking? Sending that sort of comment to my SDC Scroll can get me fired!_ * The alabaster haired woman sighed, rubbing her temple and clearly taking her fiancé's words to mind, calming down to talk with a clearer head to them. * _But, I trust that you are feeling better now?_ *

"Slightly. Moving still hurts me a fair bit, but Neo's a little more mobile than I am." On that comment, the Schnee very visibly started blushing.

* _I still can't believe you did that Neo. I do not want to be versed on the ins and outs of your private bedroom matters._ *

" _The 'ins and outs' eh?_ " Neo signed with a smirk. Weiss groaned aggressively at yet another innuendo laced comment from the mute, handing over the Scroll to her partner beside her with a command of "Take it before I destroy it. I'm getting coffee."

* _Hey guys._ *

"Hiya Ruby. How are things going?"

* _Eh, can't complain much. It feels weird though, not having any assignments to do or missions. If we wanted, we could stop right now and that's crazy. We won't obviously, because Weiss is... well..._ *

"Weiss?"

* _Yeah... How's your holiday going?_ *

"It's actually really nice here. We were lucky Velvet found us a place in one of the oases; Vacuo would probably have been bottom of the list of Kingdoms we'd have visited for any sort of vacation. But, we wanted a change of pace too."

* _Nice. What have you been doing?_ *

' _Each other._ '

' _Neo, we are not saying that to Ruby._ '

' _Why not? She can handle a joke better than Weiss can._ '

' _She's also ten years younger than you._ '

' _You had to reopen that can of worms..._ '

* _You were going to pull the "each other" card, weren't you?_ * The older couple looked startled at the scythe wielder's (scarily accurate) comment.

"...How?"

* _I grew up with Yang and remained on a team with her throughout Beacon; whenever she and Blake were together when me and Weiss went out for the night, "each other" was normally the first thing that came to Yang's mouth. Sometimes even Blake's._ *

" _That's what happens with Mate's; they'll take on one another's traits as time progresses. Velvet and Coco are the same._ "

* _Yeah. So, why? Is it just because you can with no restrictions, or what?_ *

" _Ooh, someone's interesting in our private lives._ "

* _I'm just curious._ * There wasn't a sliver of embarrassment in that sentence, and Fox felt ever so slightly put off by that fact.

"Well, the long and the short is we were fussing too much over Velvet and Coco and their daughter for them, so they basically made us go on holiday as a belated anniversary gift and said 'Make your own kids to fuss over'. So, we are."

* _Aww, that's so cute._ * A thought suddenly came to Ruby's mind and she turned away from the Scroll. * _Weiss!_ * she called, * _we need to go and see Coco and Velvet's baby!_ * Clearly Weiss was responding, but she was too far away from the device for either Fox or Neo to hear. * _Of course we can Weiss, you're not working tomorrow either._ * ... * _Yay! You're the best!_ * ... * _I'm_ _ **your**_ _dolt~_ * She turned her attention back to the couple on the other end. * _Sorry. But yeah, that's cool. So, you still trying for one, or are you just going to enjoy your holiday now?_ *

"We'll still enjoy the holiday, but that won't stop us enjoying each other's intimate company once or twice more."

* _Are you still on that topic?_ * came Weiss' voice, bringing two cups with her; one, a blasphemous concoction of sugar, cream and a little coffee, the other a much milder and sugar free coffee, * _because I will leave again if you are._ *

* _Nah, they're done. They were just telling me that they were going for kids._ *

* _Gross and unnecessary information, but I wish you luck nonetheless._ *

"Thanks Weiss. Anyway, going back to the main reason we were talking, my muscles ache something fierce."

* _I imagine they would. Neo, you know first hand what Time Shard can do on a body when you were working on your outfits and such, so you know the feeling. This, rather than being external, is something internal, and as such it's affecting the muscles and nerves directly as opposed to indirectly. Everything is slowed down inside of you, so everything aches. Even though you yourselves have gone back to full speed it seems, your insides haven't. It make take another hour or so for the pain to subside to comfortable levels, but I surmise it won't truly go until later tomorrow, even the day after._ *

"So, this all happened because of the vendor cooling down the coconuts with Ice Dust?"

* _Not being able to see what was actually inside that barrel of his, it seems that way, yes. The compounds in the coconut, both the water and the shell, broke down the Dust far more efficiently than I've ever seen before, so that may explain why it took us a little longer to work out why it would have done what it did, and why it affected you so rapidly. Sorry._ *

"No that's fine. Thanks for all the help Weiss."

* _It's fine. Now, please do not send any more messages of the sort from before to me, those messages are tracked periodically and I need to spend some time finding ways to erase it from the system before someone finds out._ *

" _Weiss Schnee, Hacker Extraordinaire. How will you stop your Dad from finding out?_ "

* _Brilliant as he claims to be, he seldom looks much at the low workers of his company - it's how I managed to secure a place here without him knowing for three months. By that point he didn't care, so long as I wasn't trying to usurp him anymore. I've been slowly rising up the ranks with my eyes on the chair of the company, but through honest work as opposed to it being a birth right. But, being so low down yet still having some influence in the workplace, I can get those who monitor the company Scrolls to miss a few things on mine._ *

* _And you claim_ _ **me**_ _using_ _ **my**_ _powers are unethical..._ * Ruby moaned from just off screen.

* _Of course they are; those puppy dog eyes are downright criminal and should never be used on man, woman or child again._ * That prompted a slight whimpering from one side that made Weiss' ice blue eyes widen. * _I've made a mistake..._ * She turned to stare directly at Ruby, who was currently sitting knees up on their settee and her eyes pulling the most outrageously cute face they could manage. * _Ruby Rose, you stop that this instant._ * The look continued. * _I'm warning you..._ * There was a small break in her composure and both Neo and Fox heard it. * _Ruby..._ * Weiss stared unblinking, even trying to avert her gaze, but even though her head moved her eyes did not. * _Argh!_ * She reached over and grabbed Ruby, pulling her into a hug. * _I_ _ **hate**_ _it when you do that to me._ *

Ruby's face was front and centre on the Scroll now, the crimsonette having caught it before it hit the floor. Fox and Neo felt the same as Weiss clearly did, as her large silver orbs shone with a mysterious, almost ethereal sparkle. While Weiss continued to snuggle, Ruby broke the puppy dog face and winked at the screen.

" _You little minx, Rose._ " Ruby just smiled cheekily at Neo.

* _I may be like this for a while, so we'll talk to you guys later, 'kay? Might even see if we can pop in to see the baby._ *

"Sounds like a plan. We'll probably be home early evening tomorrow."

* _Sweet! Catch you later._ *

Their video called ended.

"See, I told you Weiss would hate the comment."

' ** _That's_** _what you're taking from this? We've been hit with what is essentially a drug that slows our bodies down from the inside and you're going with "Weiss hated the comment"? Honestly..._ '

"Truth is hun, I'm scared." The honest statement from her husband took Neo by surprise, a sentiment reflected in her shifting eye colour.

' _Scared? What is there to-?_ '

"I'm scared for our child, Neo." Even after the quiet that came from losing both Ruby and Weiss in conversation, the silence between them now was palpable. "Like you said, we'd been drugged. What could that do to us?"

' _I… I don't know. I don't know that Weiss knows either. Really, all I can suggest is that we keep doing what we've been doing whilst we have the luxury and solitude to do so, then go back to normal when we leave here and back home. After that, we go and see a doctor two or three months down the line, we can see what they have to say, and then we take it from there._ '

"That works, I guess." He didn't sound sure of himself understandably, so Neo opted to forgo words and hug her husband around his middle, laying her head across his lap once she was done. Those actions was all he needed to know that she trusted him in whatever decision he made, and that hopefully he could trust her judgement on this too. The copper brown eyed man smiled, running his fingers through his wife's pink and brown locks as he glanced down at her face, smiling back at him the moment their eyes made contact.

They understood one another, both in terms of what they wanted to do and what the other wanted _them_ to do, through that simple action: fight on for their future child. Give them a chance to live.

* * *

Much to their disappointment, after the Dust Infused Coconut Motor-control Violating Effect (something Neo and Fox decided they are calling what happened to them purely because it was the only thing that made sense describing what it was _and_ where the words can be abbreviated to DICMOVE, because they are both normal, functioning adults) had taken hold inside them, their bodies really weren't ready to try and behave normally. This effect stayed with them right the way through to late evening, by which point neither person was in any state to try and get up to see the nightlife of Lac Filio as they had promised they'd do before. So sadly, they decided to remain in their room, packing where they could, ordering a small bit of room service as their only source of food that entire day once the sun had gone down, even taking advantage of the self-imposed / pain-imposed room arrest by trying to have sex to pass the time, seeing as they found nothing to watch on their Scrolls.

They only tried once, as the pain caused whenever they tried anything normal (for them) cause Neo some discomfort, but caused Fox enough pain for it to no longer be fun. Even Fox laying down and doing absolutely nothing, letting Neo literally do all the work, still brought about pain. So, they decided against that pastime, and instead focussed their efforts on learning how to properly care for their child, rather than trying to make one, and falling asleep early as a result of such a non-strenuous activity.

The perk to that, whilst not being as fun short-term, meant that the couple were up by about 5:00am the next morning. That gave them plenty of time to finish packing and prepare themselves for the journey home.

' _Everything set?_ ' Neo asked as they looked around their room one last time.

"Seems that way. Main thing: do we have our gifts for everyone?"

Neo showed him the small bags they had set aside for everyone, then slotted them in near the top of their luggage, just below their fleece and hoodie. ' _Not being rude or anything, but wouldn't our own stuff be the main thing?_ '

"What? Well, yeah; that goes without question." She sighed silently, shaking her head with a smile as she took the first suitcase and started wheeling it out as Fox took the second.

"Mr Ulata?" Fox called as they entered the main reception. The Faunus greeted them again.

"Ah, good to see you two again. I take it this is your farewell?"

"Indeed it is," he answered, handing back the key cards, "we need to head back home and get on with our lives and jobs as Huntsmen, but we have loved it here." Neo nodded in agreement.

"It's wonderful for you two to say so. Please, do consider coming again; as far as outsider customers, you two are some of the nicest we've had, and I don't say that a lot."

"It's nice of you to say so sir." The couple waved as they left the hotel for the last time, the 9:00am sun warming but not overpoweringly so. "Do you want to go and do something before we head home? Or just beeline to the ship home and see if we can get the earlier flight? I'm open for suggestions."

' _I say, seeing as we already got everything for everyone a couple of days ago, we just head straight home. I'm sure they miss us greatly, and it means that we might get to see Ruby and Weiss - they did say that they'd try to pop in to see the baby today._ '

"Fair point; homeward bound it is."

Taking in the last of the sights as they made their way to the Bullhead, Neo couldn't help but snap a few final photos to show the rest of their team having returned home in a few hours.

' _I've enjoyed it here,_ ' Fox said, looking back on Occulta as they flew closer to the main airport, favouring his mental voice to save his actual one for when they weren't battling for noise dominance against Bullhead engines, ' _sure, the weather's been… extreme, and the whole coconut incident-_ '

' _Which we agreed we'd only bring up again once we saw Weiss, providing it wasn't her wedding day._ '

' _I know, sorry. But regardless of all of that, I thoroughly enjoyed it here._ '

Neo's eyebrow rose, and a half smile grew on her face. ' _Now I wonder, is that because you spent all this time away from responsibilities and worries with your darling, beautiful wife, or was it just because you got to make love to her whenever you wanted because there was no one else in the room to disturb you like there would be at home?_ '

' _Oh, the first answer. Definitely the first answer. There's no way it could be_ _ **anything**_ _except the first answer._ ' She knew he was pulling her leg, and he knew that she knew, but he wanted to see how long she'd run with it before calling him out.

' _We both know you're lying, just tell me the truth._ ' Wow, not at all it seems.

' _Yeah, option two. But I'm not knocking the fact we got to take this break. We needed it to clear our minds and get us to focus again - we'd been lacking that recently._ ' She nodded, accepting that what they were doing before this was unhealthy for not only themselves but for Yatsuhashi, for Velvet, and especially for Coco and Clementine. Time away really gave them the space they needed to reflect and come back to their everyday lives refreshed, but also refocused.

With a fair amount of luck (and the tiniest amount of using their Huntsmen status as leverage) they managed to squeeze onto the earlier of the two ships heading to Vale that day.

 **N - 'I hope you're not doing anything, in which case I'm sorry in advance.  
'We're heading back now, about 10 mins before take off.  
'See you at the airport x'**

Neo hoped that one of the intended recipients got that before they were in the air and a response was infinitely more difficult to get. Luckily, as she was being seated, one came through.

 **V - 'Lucky for you, I wasn't on night duty last night. ;) I'll be there as soon as I can, look for the big car out front.'  
'Or the ears, depending on when I get there in relation to you.'**

 **N - 'See you soon x'** ' _We've got our ride home sorted._ '

"Great! Do you think there are bedrooms on here as well?"

' _Fox, it's a Cross-Kingdom flight, of course there'll be beds._ '

"Perfect," he smiled as he sat back on his chair. He wasn't done speaking though, as without taking his sights off the front, he added, ' _because I'm feeling at a loss because of last night, and seeing as this may be the last chance we have any time to do this at our leisure, I'd like to make up for lost time._ '

' _Ah, I follow._ ' The captain spoke over the tannoy system, as they always did, and Neo listened momentarily. She didn't want to jump at the offer straight away, even though she _really_ wanted to, so she waited for the mandatory safety exit part of the briefing before she spoke again. ' _I'm so going to make up for the lost time in the hotel._ ' Fox grinned slyly; he was in for a ride.

* * *

 **BIRTHDAY!**

Now I have your attention, I'd like to inform y'all that today is my Birthday. Twenty-two years old.

I didn't think I'd make it to fifteen.

I'm kidding, of course... it was more like twelve.

And, as I'm feeling generous / I've got tickets to an 8am showing of Endgame next Thursday and therefore probably won't remember to upload anything that day due to my face being awash with tears...


	98. You Meet Some Real Creeps at the Airport

...Double chapter upload!

* * *

 **KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Velvet pulled up as close to the terminal as she could. Given the fact that it was mid-afternoon on a Thursday, it was fairly packed and finding space to park was a little bit trickier than it was dropping them off, mostly due the fact that she knew where they were when she dropped them off. Now, she was just waiting for them to make it through everything, grab their stuff and find her in the vast sea of parking spaces for collections.

 **V - 'I'm outside now, parked in Section D. I'll be heading inside to meet you there'**

 **N - 'We'll see you soon then x'**

"So they've landed, that's a good sign," she said to herself as she locked the car and made her way through towards the arrivals gate. The walk to the main terminal alone was five minutes from where she was, and judging from the prompt message from the tricoloured woman she was picking up, that would be enough to meet them, turn around and head home.

As a Huntress, Velvet trained for years to know that you should always be prepared when it came to battle. Having information on your intended target was crucial so then you knew what you were dealing with on many different levels: motive, means of attack; the like. Backup was often appreciated, but you weren't always fortunate to face things with someone else. Knowing your own limits, both physical and mental, was paramount to leaving any battle victorious.

Sadly, as the Rabbit was making her way across the car park, three other Faunus made their way towards her. Her ears twitched as they stepped closer to her, her walking rhythm not swaying at all as she listened to theirs, but her nerves were getting the better of her as her ears started falling flatter on her head.

' _They can see that, they know I'm afraid._ ' She did her best to keep herself calm, and also to project her worries through her Mark; hopefully Coco could feel the anxiousness and get Fox and Neo there quicker.

"Excuse me," came the eerie voice of one of the three. He was a tall man with brown hair, a small goatee and, most noticeably, two giant Bat wings coming off his back. "I couldn't help but notice you looked a little lost. Perhaps we can help you with that." He gestured out to his two fellow Faunus, one man with dark skin and a pair of small tusks either side of his mouth, clearly a Boar Faunus, the other was a woman with pale grey skin and very prominent veins on her neck.

"I know exactly where I'm going, thank you. Now please, move."

"Oh no, that won't do. You see, we think you are _lost_. A Faunus like you, here alone to no doubt to pick up some human scum from their flight and drive them wherever they want. _We_ want to help you with that, by killing the ones who dare treat our kind with anything subservient."

"You don't understand," Velvet defended, noticing the pincer maneuver these three were trying to pull on her. She slipped her Scroll out of the back pocket she kept it in and managed to pull up and activate the 'Distress Beacon' on there. Sadly, with a pincer maneuver, one person goes round on each side of the intended target, so the woman noticed the Scroll trick and fired a line of silk webbing out, binding the Rabbit's hand to the device, and both of those to her back.

' _Spider Faunus?! Great, now more reasons to hate those things..._ '

"Excellent work, Trifa," the Bat man commented, approaching Velvet far more directly as she had no means of escaping them or calling for help on her Scroll. Unfortunately for them, the 'Distress Beacon' is active as long as it is until someone physically turns it off, so they unintentionally stuck a homing device to their target's back.

"Thanks Yuma, she was going to call for help."

*tsk, tsk* "Naughty, naughty, little rabbit." The way the Bat Faunus said those words would alone have made the mage shudder hearing them said to anyone, but the added fact they were directed straight at her sent a cold chill up her spine. "Perhaps we should take you somewhere else, and teach you a lesson properly."

She narrowed her eyes and glared at the Bat Faunus, who responded with a smirk. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

He chuckled, although with his raspy voice it sounded much more like a growl, at the prospect, leaning right in to the mage's personal space, causing her to lean back and plant her foot behind her to stay out of his way.

"And what makes you so sure?"

"This." Without any further warning, Velvet used the fact she was leaning back to thrust her head forward at speed, her head impacting perfectly with the man's nose. He cried in pain and clamped his hand over it to stop the inevitable bleeding, giving her time to bring her rear leg forward and kick him square in the chest and knocking him over. Her head hurt because of the headbutt, but at least he wasn't going to be much of a problem for a little while now.

"You're going to regret that!" the boar growled as he lowered himself to charge. Velvet was prepared for it, but forgot that her third assailant was a Spider momentarily, only remembering once the webs wrapped around her entire upper body and rendering her arms useless in the upcoming fight.

"Trying something, were you? Not likely," Trifa grinned.

' _Great, no arms, just what I needed. My options just slimmed tremendously; "Avoid", "Run" or "Kick them", and they're not going to just let me leave._ ' Sure enough, the Boar started on the offensive, charging straight for her. Being a Rabbit meant she had powerful enough leg muscles to push herself off the ground and jump over her own head height without even using any Aura, so the charge was easily countered by her simply leaping over the man. But, not wanting him to leave unscathed, she shifted her weight and kicked back, both of her heels crashing into the back of his head and he tumbled to the floor in pain, the combination of a hard knock from both her and the floor knocking him out cold.

Sadly, in doing that, she fell to the ground herself, grunting in pain upon impact. Doing her best to shift her weight to stand, that became an impossibility when Trifa again webbed her up, this time sticking the Rabbit to the floor so that she was completely immobile.

"Now I've got you right where I want you," Trifa grinned, removing the Spider's silk from her hand.

"Excellent work, Trifa," Yuma complemented as he stood, his face red with his own blood. "Now, what to do with you?" The Bat leaned down right by Velvet's face, doing her best to back away from it but only getting so far with her body stuck to the ground. "It seems you don't want to join us, so we may just have to dispose of you; they've clearly corrupted you." Her eyes widened in fear when she heard that.

"No, please! I have a daughter, please, just let me go!" She know she wanted to be strong and face off against these two properly, but the threat against her life, especially when she had no one around her to but her time or even save her, caused her voice to waver and her resolve to shatter.

"Pleading? What a tell-tale sign of weakness." As he was handed a dagger ready to end her life, a white booted foot came flying out of nowhere and collided straight with the male Faunus' face. "What?!"

"You lay another hand on my teammate, and I know my wife here won't hesitate to rip those wings off," Fox threatened as he made his way up behind her, following Neo's attack on Yuma.

"So, she _does_ have friends," he spat, "how pitiful though that they're all human."

"You say that now, but when these humans are beating your faces into the dirt for trying to hurt not only us but a fellow Faunus, you'll see how pitiful we really are. Especially as you were trying to kill my favourite teammate." ' _No offence, just trying to get a point across._ '

' _Sure..._ ' Neo joked back, her gaze not wavering from the pair ahead of them. The Spider Faunus skipped the back and forth, favouring instead a direct attack. She fired her silk to catch Neo, but the mute was prepared for it and dodged out of the way of it, catching the strand that was coming after it. She couldn't detach herself from it fast enough, as Neo yanked it and pulled her towards her hard, bringing the grey haired Faunus face in direct line with Neo's fist. Yuma flew in and swiped at Fox. He ducked under the attack, then jumped back to avoid the second swing at him. Yuma was on the offensive the entire time, but Fox was much nimbler that he was and remained out of reach with every swipe.

Being otherwise occupied with trying to attack Fox, Yuma didn't see Neo freeing Velvet from her webbed prison; her blade slicing through the silk like it was nothing.

" _Are you alright Velv?_ "

"We kick his ass first," she replied, bypassing the question and speaking with rage in her usually timid voice, "then you can ask again." Neo nodded, not wishing to have Velvet's anger directed her way, and helped the Rabbit stand.

"Why do you insist on fighting for her?" Yuma interrogated, pinning Fox to the floor and trying his best to attack him, "she is a Faunus, and you are not. Surely, she is beneath you."

"And here I was thinking you were on her side," Fox shot back snarkily. "'She' is a Huntress, 'she' is my teammate, and 'she' fights for what she knows is right the _right_ way, not through some perverted ideas and twisted views on the world."

"If she fights with you, then it is her views that are twisted."

"How's _this_ for twisted?" came Velvet's response. Before either had a chance to react, the mage flew at Yuma and landed a kick right on the joint of his left wing, breaking it with ease considering the surprise attack, the fact he didn't get a chance to bring up his Aura fast enough and the force behind it. He screamed in pain, releasing his hold on the scarred man. She landed another kick on the back of his leg bringing him to the floor completely, then as he turned to fight her instead, she landed one more swift yet powerful kick straight to the face, knocking him down and out of the count.

The Rabbit puffed and panted, wanting nothing more than to continue beating on him, but she knew better and decided to walk away.

"Velv? You okay?"

"I'm fine, let's just go." He saw it in her eyes, she was anything _but_ fine. In fact, she looked about thirty seconds away from breaking down in tears.

' _Grab our stuff; her Beacon's still up, so follow that._ ' The heterochromatic woman nodded, then promptly vanished in a hail of shards back towards the terminal. "Velvet, are you sure you're fine? They seemed to be quite-"

"I said I'm fine, Fox!" she shouted back, glaring at him. He may have been blind many years ago, but now he could see as clear as day the tears that were welling up in her eyes as the adrenaline was dissipating and reality was coming back into play. "I'm okay." He had a sneaking suspicion that she'd said that more to herself than him. Sure enough, the energy had faded and with that came the waterworks.

First it was a single choked sob.

Then a second, fighting through to be heard.

Then a third.

And on the fourth sob, Velvet began crying. Hard. Fox ran up and caught her as her legs gave way from underneath her, all of her energy going into the tears now coming on thick and fast, and he just cuddled her close, swaying side to side.

"It's okay. It's alright, I'm here. No one else is going to hurt you."

* * *

Once she had retrieved their things, Neo came back to find Velvet cuddling up close to Fox in the back seat of the car. She may have been there to pick them up from the airport, but in the state she was in Fox was outright refusing to let her drive, even if it was a short drive home.

"Neo, it's fine," she insisted, "I can drive. You've just come back off holiday-"

"And you've just been attacked by a group of strangers. I'd much rather see you at home and safe than you worrying at the wheel all the way home." His voice came across very protective, and she was thankful for that. Right now, she wanted - no, she _needed_ to feel safe.

' _I suppose this isn't a bad thing after all..._ ' she thought to herself.

 _Security._

Her small smile grew as she felt the emotions flooding through her Mate's Mark. Coco had supposedly felt the turmoil going on with her and decided that this was the best course of action for her, considering she was as far away as she was at the moment.

"...Neo says she'll get us home as fast as she safely and legally can, and I agree. Coco needs to know you're alright. I can already see her worrying."

The mage's face lit up with a small smile. She was tempted to ask why Neo included the 'legal' bit in there, but she wasn't feeling the banter at the moment, so settled on a simple, "Thank you Neo," something the mute smiled back at in response.

The trip back home wasn't interrupted at all, which Velvet was thankful for. Chief among the numerous reasons she was thankful was that she knew, even without her Mark, that Coco would be close to breaking down in a full-on panic about her. The sooner she got home to her, the better it would be for everyone involved.

Second was that Coco was amazing at comforting her and making her feel safe. That meant no disrespect to Fox, who was currently sat in the back seat of the car with her head on his lap, his fingers stroking her hair and rubbing her shoulders. As people who were both very shy and introverted at the start of their time at Beacon, and with everyone present fully aware that Velvet was Fox's first crush at Beacon, or anywhere for that matter, this would have been great for them both several years ago. But now, both Fox and Velvet had beautiful girlfriends that became beautiful wives, and each of them did a lot better at comforting their respective partners than the rest if their team ever could, knowing what to do at every moment in a way that seemed alien or magical - whichever you prefer - to anyone else.

Third, she just wanted to be at home. She wanted to sit down in a nice, familiar environment with her closest friends, her wife and her baby daughter, somewhere where there was no driving down the freeway, or fighting Grimm, or thwarting plots, or anything malicious whatsoever.

Just her and them.

And nothing else.

When they finally pulled up outside their house, Velvet could see Coco pacing about by the window before they had even stopped. The leader didn't notice the car pulling up, instead it looked like Clementine heard and started making noises, prompting Coco to them turn and see them. Velvet smiled as best as she could, making sure her wife knew that she was alright.

"Let's not keep her waiting," Fox said, opening the door and hopping out to grab his and Neo's things from the boot of the car.

The moment the door was open Coco could be heard making her way to it as fast as she possibly could, staring to make sure she saw that Velvet was alright. Her eyes started to tear up as the brown eyed wives looked at each other, one over the shattered moon that the other was safe.

"I was so worried," the gunner cried as she threw herself forward to embrace her wife, crying into the smaller woman's shoulder, "I thought I was going to lose you."

"It'd take more than that to lose me," the Faunus assured. Coco wasn't convinced.

"But I still _thought_ I was. I know she doesn't like to bring it up much, but I thought about what Ruby said about her Mom, how she was a Super Mom, only to lose her so young. I thought that was going to happen to you, and honestly if not for Yatsu and our little Clemmy, I would have been stressing out into next week."

"I'm fine Coco," she assured again, leaning in and planting a long, comforting kiss on her lips, "I'm fine. I'm home now, and that's what we're going to focus on. Alright?" The fashionista nodded, her grin growing even as the tears went.

"People'll start to think that you're in charge of the team the way you continue on like that," she joked. Velvet didn't say anything else; she just laughed and kissed her again. Clementine shifted in Coco's arms, prompting both parents to look at her. "Does someone want to be held by Mommy? Do you? Go on then."

"Hey there Clemmy," cooed the Faunus, taking the child from her partner as they made their way back into the main room, "did you miss your Mommy? Did Mama look after you whilst I was gone?" Clementine made a slight noise, so she used that as an excuse to relieve the tension. "She _didn't?_ Coco Scarlatina, what did you do, rejecting our daughter like that?"

"What?! I didn't do anything wrong, I swear!" Velvet saw that Coco believed her serious, so she dropped the act immediately.

"I was kidding, Chocolate Drop. I wanted to lighten the mood a bit, that's all. Not the best time, eh?"

"No kidding! I felt lots of ' _Panic_ ' and ' _Dread_ ' all of a sudden, and then your 'Distress Beacon' went off, and I went from 0 to 100 pretty damn fast on the worry scale. I'm glad the other two were there, I wouldn't know what to do if I'd lost you."

"Or I you," she reminded her as they sat down. "But we're in this together, remember?" Coco nodded, leaning in to let her wife cuddle up to her.

"So? How was the holiday?" Yatsuhashi asked, breaking the silence they'd fallen into.

"Shit, forgot about that. Sorry guys."

"Coco!" her wife scolded.

"Shit, sorry. Shit! Fu-" a hand clamped over her mouth to stop anything else being said. "I'll shut up now…"

" _The holiday was great. We can't thank you enough for finding that Velvet._ "

"It was nothing you two. Before you tell us how it all went, we gotta ask you something, if that's alright?"

"Yeah… why?"

"Well, we were just wondering if-"

"How many times did you two have sex over there, and when was the first time?" Coco had to admit she was still a little hormonal after not only the birth but the incident earlier that day, so her being blunt wasn't unexpected.

"Why would we tell you that?"

"Just do it."

"I dunno, I think it was something like nine, ten times." Yatsuhashi smiled slightly, not making his emotions known. "And the first time was on the flight over." Velvet made her emotions very much known, almost shouting a 'Yes!' on hearing that. Luckily, Clementine didn't mind too much. Naturally, the couple looked between themselves trying to figure out just why she was so happy about that. As they were doing that, Yatsuhashi went to one of their cupboards and took down two envelopes. He kept one for himself and handed the other to Velvet.

"I believe these winnings are yours."

" _You three were_ _ **betting**_ _? On what?_ "

"Well, we knew you two were going to be going at it whilst you were away, so we were betting on when you'd start and how many times you were going down on each other." Coco glanced over at Yatsuhashi typing away on his Scroll, then at a grinning Velvet, who noticed and winked at her wife.

 _Possessive_.

' _Oum, help me,_ ' she begged on feeling that combined with the looks the Rabbit was giving her. "Yatsuhashi guessed correctly the number of times you'd have sex, Velvet got the first time right, so they each get the winnings from their respective envelopes."

" _How much is in those things?_ "

"I think we all put 150 Lien in each one," Velvet mentioned as she tore the paper to get inside, "so I'm fine with what I got. Plus, I got a little 'Bunny Bonus' from Coco because I won."

"So, you're getting, like 450 Lien each?" Fox asked, bypassing the statement from Velvet.

"We're getting at least _600_ Lien," the Faunus boasted, "Maggie bet on this as well."

"And she said that she hates you two for being too sexually active," the tank added, relaying her message out loud, "although she uses much more colourful vocabulary that I refuse to repeat in front of Clementine."

"That settles that then; now we wait a couple of months and wait to see if it's a boy or girl." The couple nodded with smiles on their faces. Team CFVYN was going to be a proper team family. "Now, let's all get to bed. I don't know about you, but I'm tired."

"That'll be the parenthood doing that," Fox teased, knowing that in less than a year's time that would be himself and Neo in the same state of exhaustion.

As everyone was making their way upstairs despite it being fairly early in the evening, Velvet leaned in to her partner and whispered "I'm going to make you wake everyone up with your screaming," into her ear. She nipped at her earlobe too, uttering "And that's a promise."

' _Dear Gods, what have I gotten myself into?_ '

* * *

I had a lot of fun writing the past two chapters. It was nice seeing some other Faunus in Volume 5, and it was definitely weird hearing Nick "Lanipator" Landis voicing Yuma. But, I ain't gonna complain.

And much like the movie I am going to see, "We're in the endgame now." There are only 11 more chapters after this, and an epilogue.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	99. As Happy As Can Be

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The day they been waiting for had arrived at last.

It had been a little over nine and a half weeks since Fox and Neo got back from their holiday to Vacuo, meaning that it had just gone ten weeks since first headed off, and that meant that they were due a visit to their local doctor for an ultrasound.

' _I'm so excited,_ ' Neo said as she grinned, driving herself and Fox to the local doctor's surgery.

"Me too. It's such a nerve racking feeling, but I'm so glad it's finally happening." She nodded and smiled some more, reaching over with her right hand and holding onto his left as she drove.

The couple, especially Neo, had been looking forward to this day ever since they'd returned. They decided to sleep off the heated travel home, the fight with Velvet's attackers and the odd revelation that their four closest friends had bet over when and how often they'd have sex whilst on holiday and start recounting the good times they had from the next morning onwards. Obviously they didn't recount _all_ of the good times (at least, not to everyone - Coco had a weird habit of wanting to know _everything,_ to the point where they gave up trying to question and instead accepted it), but things like the mall and its subsequent gorgeous rooftop, the night lights of Lac Filio, even the people, were all talked about.

But obviously, now that they had tried for a child, the main topic on their lips (metaphorically so, in Neo's case) was that first imminent ultrasound and the journey for the team, but especially them, from that point onwards.

Velvet had inquired why they didn't want to see whether or not she was actually pregnant first before they went – the tests they bought in Vacuo weren't decorative pieces – but Neo assured her that everything will be fine. She'd been going through the same sort of emotions and feelings as Coco had, so what made her any different?

Finally arriving at the Shroud Village Doctor's Surgery, the couple made their way inside and waited. Neo couldn't keep her legs still the whole time they were in there, either tapping them absentmindedly or drumming her fingers on her knees.

"Neo, sweetie, you'll be fine."

' _Sorry, not sorry,_ ' she replied, ' _we're going to see our baby for the first time. How could I not be excited?_ '

"I know, I'm excited too. We've just got to-"

"Mr. and Mrs. Alistair?"

"-go and see the Doctor over there." Neo practically bounded up to the Doctor, her joy over the scenario coming to a natural head as she was about five minutes away from seeing her child for the first time.

"Hello there, my name is Doctor Doloke, I'll be the Ultrasound Technician having a look at you today." The doctor that greeted them at the corridor was a fairly large woman with dark skin and hazel eyes, but her voice was so calming and made Neo feel right at ease, just what she needed with how her heart was doing loops in her chest. "I take it this is going to be your first scan, going by the size of you?" Neo nodded, but Doctor Doloke was facing the other direction and so didn't see the action take place. "It's alright to be nervous my dear, I won't judge."

"Sorry Doctor, but N- but _Orchid_ is mute."

"I'm sorry, I should have known."

"It's alright, we get that a lot." The understanding Doctor smiled at that, then proceeded to continue down to the room where the ultrasound was taking place. Walking into intimate space, they saw two of the four walls decorated in a very minimalistic manner. They were adorned with the occasional image of children on them, likely images of previous people who'd entered the room and gotten what they'd wanted.

The wall of the room directly opposite the door was a soft lemon colour with a stack of vertical shelves in the far left corner. It also housed a worktop with a small sink and hand sanitiser on the wall. The walls on the left and right of the entrance were much lighter in colour, favouring more of an egg white tone. The right wall housed a single light in the middle between two of the aforementioned picture frames, whereas the left had only a single television screen positioned high up so that the person in the chairs could see the screen clearly. The chair Fox was in was a small, white leather swivel number, as was the Doctor's albeit hers appeared the less comfortable option of the two. Neo's chair was a much larger chair with a reclining headrest positioned in the middle of the two.

"Neither of you are Faunus, are you?" They silently replied with 'No'. "Okay then; this machine can irritate some Faunus with acute hearing, so it's always in their best interests and our own to ask beforehand, even if people don't have the traits."

' _Velvet must have_ _ **hated**_ _this place then._ '

"Now, if you two want to take a seat in your chairs, I'll prep everything up for you and we can get started." The couple did as they were told, smiling to each other as they did so.

' _I'm so proud of you Neo,_ ' he admitted with a smile on his face and a gleam in his eye.

' _I can't take all of the credit, you made this possible,_ ' she countered as she eased herself down on her seat. Fox reached out his hand to hold hers, and she happily accepted it. A cheeky grin grew on her face as their fingers interlocked. ' _This ought to confuse her._ '

"Now, I'm going to apply this gel to your stomach, and that will ma- ah!" What Doctor Doloke saw when she turned around was most peculiar; Neo was currently sitting in the smaller chair and Fox was lying down in the large reclining chair with his top up to expose his stomach. "I… what are you doing?"

"We're sitting and lying down," Fox answering in confusion, "is… that not what you asked us to do?"

"... I don't know whether you two are playing a joke on me, or whether you are genuinely confused about how this is supposed to go, but I am paid to scan the _female_ of a couple for the child inside of them. If this truly is a joke, then it was more shock value than 'ha ha' funny, but seeing as you are both old enough I know that not to be true. Now, swap yourselves around _now,_ or I will send you out and you can go find somewhere else to have the scan for wasting our time and potentially our resources as well." The person sitting down looked at the one on the middle seat with a panicked expression, something they understood and nodded at. Suddenly, the couple's images started to shimmer as 'Fox' turned back into Neo on the reclined seat and 'Neo' in the chair became Fox again.

"Sorry, she's done that a couple of times before. She gets a small laugh from it."

"Well, perhaps it's not best to do that at a time like this. Please, do not try and pull that sort of stunt again Orchid, okay?" The mute nodded fearfully as the Doctor grabbed some more of the gel. "I'm going to put this on your stomach, get a nice solid coating over it, and then use this machine to get a good look inside and see your little one. Sound good to you?" Neo smiled, easing herself into a more comfortable position so that she could see the screen without overstretching herself.

Doctor Doloke followed through with what she said she would do, covering Neo's stomach in the gel (which she mentioned to Fox ' _is really cold and kind of tickles_ ') and let it sit for about a minute. In that time, she explained how this gel has slightly more of an effect than the normal gel would because it can help get readings through people's Auras; as a side effect they may feel a tingly sensation, something Fox said that she was mentioning it doing so. Once it had sat there for a minute, she started putting the device on her stomach.

"This machine emits a very high pitched sound, one too high for human ears to detect, into you to map out the inside of your womb and therefore your baby as well. It's why I asked if you two were Faunus', we would have provided earbuds to try and minimise the discomfort. Speaking of which, this may be a bit cold." She lay the device on the woman's stomach and, sure enough, it was cold to the touch. Neo did her best not to jolt away from the sudden freezing cold metal against her skin, knowing that if it's removed she'll have to have it reapplied again, thus colder. It'll warm up on her skin eventually.

Neo looked at Fox again, a smile on her face as Doctor Doloke scanned her. The Doctor herself was smiling. But after a minute of scanning, she couldn't find anything.

"Odd…" the hazel eyed woman mused, turning up the device to its highest frequency. She scanned again, but she wasn't exactly sending out the most positive of vibes about the whole situation.

"What's the matter, Doc?" The woman looked at the dark skinned man with a concerned look, then back at the screen on the wall.

"I apologise if this comes across a bit forward, but are you two most definitely certain you managed to successfully copulate to try for a child."

' _Of course we did!_ ' Neo was shouting at her, thankful and equally not for the barrier her voice put up to stop the woman getting an earful from her. ' _I've even got video proof. Fox, tell her I've got proof that we did._ '

' _I am_ _ **not**_ _telling the Doctor that you have video proof._ '

' _Why not?_ ' she teased.

The Doctor grabbed some paper towels and wiped the ice cream woman's stomach, cleaning the gel away as she placed the machine back with a heavy sigh. "Doctor Doloke, what happened?"

"I'm sorry to have you two do this, but I will need you to go to Vale Hospital for a scan. They may even need to take a few scans. Obviously as a village practitioner for here I can only do so much, so the staff and equipment at the main Hospital can provide much better care and treatment there than I ever could." What she said true; the little village CFVYN lived in, Shroud, really didn't have a lot in comparison to the main wards at any of the Kingdoms' much larger main Hospitals.

"Would you mind telling us _why_ though?"

"I'm not sure I can, which is why I want you to go now."

* * *

The remaining members of CFVYN were at home working through various things. Coco was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for their meal later tonight, whilst Velvet was looking for missions on their Scroll for them to go on in a week; her and Coco's maternity leave from their Huntsmen lives didn't technically expire for another few months, but a small mission with only one of them leaving here and there wouldn't hurt to keep them going, especially with a growing family on the way. Yatsuhashi was left with caring for Clementine, not that it really mattered to the little Faunus child at all. She was very content being gently rocked in the giant's arms, her still-growing face muscles contorting into better attempts at smiles when she truly felt at ease in his embrace.

Coco's Scroll started to buzz on the counter in their little kitchen, and the ringtone told her that it was Fox.

"Could you get that for us sweetie? I'm a little tied up."

"Sure thing." Velvet made her way into the kitchen to grab the Scroll, 'conveniently' passing by Coco to give her bum a bit of a playful slap before picking the Scroll up and answering.

"Cheeky," the fashionista said, glancing back at her wife, who simply winked in response.

"Hey there Fox! How's everything-" Her smile faded at whatever was being said to her over the Scroll, and Coco noticed immediately. Not only did she hear Velvet's happiness drop, but she felt suddenly confused and sad. And knowing that she wasn't growing any emotional connection to the vegetables she was chopping, she spun around to see what had put a dampener on the Faunus' mood. "Really? … Well, yeah, of course I'm going to worry, we _all_ are. … Fox, you can't stop us from doing that. … I know, just … ju- … just listen, please! … Thank you. Now, you go there and keep us updated, we'll keep something for you when you get home, alright? … Good. Thanks for the call. … Yeah, so I've been told. … Love you too Fox, but don't tell Neo. … Oh she already knows? Well, we'll be having a talk later then won't we? … Alright, bye." Her small smile faded again, replaced by a hard frown.

"Mind sharing what was said?" her Mate asked as Yatsuhashi walked in, hearing the conversation himself.

"They're being sent to the Vale Hospital."

* * *

"Mrs. Alistair?" Neo was much less excited to hear her name called out this time. She rose and walked over, Fox on her heel the whole time. "My name is Doctor Neket, I'll be seeing you today. I've had some information sent through to me from Doctor Doloke at the Shroud Village Doctor's Surgery, so what we're going to do is run a few simple tests on you, then whilst they're being processed we can take you back in for another ultrasound. Sound good to you?" The mute nodded, handing her Scroll across to the doctor with a pre-typed message.

 **Sorry for the silence, I'm mute**

"Oh, that's alright. We can have a couple of staff here today assisting me who know some Sign Language to communicate with you, if that's alright?" She nodded again, briefly smiling at the lady before they continued on.

' _Would you like me to speak for you from time to time, or are you happy to speak in Sign for a while?_ '

' _Sign will be okay._ ' She didn't even move her eyes as she said that, focussing with laser sight on where she was going. Fox closed the gap between them, slipping his hand into hers.

' _I'm here for you Neo. You know that, right?_ '

With a squeeze, she responded with a glum sounding ' _Yeah, I know._ '

The moment they had walked into the first room, Neo was asked to do what she deemed a myriad of various different things at once, all whilst the doctors worked around her, taking notes and analysing the results. Physically, she was perfectly fit and healthy, and her Aura was strong from the years of training she'd had with it. But once the issue of past medical history came up, things only worsened for her.

" _DAG Syndrome?_ " a nurse asked, his eyebrows arching on hearing that.

" _I've had it for years, practically all my life. All I know is that I reacted negatively to a dosage of an experimental cure that resulted in my Aura attacking me from the inside and I lost my voice from it. And I've said before, you can speak to me normally - I'll just reply like this._ "

"If you insist," the doctor complied. "We will need to run you through a quick scan of your body, just to see if there were any lasting effects from that initial DAG attack. It will only take five minutes, but the results may be a little longer. Shall we?" Neo nodded, but stopped after a single step. She held up a finger to say, "Hold on", then crossed over to Fox.

' _I'm going to have a scan, should be about ten, fifteen minutes. You can go and get something to eat if you want, save waiting around for me growing hungry._ '

' _I'll be fine._ '

' _You'll be worrying through your energy reserves, is what you'll be doing. Go eat._ ' She smirked at him as he rolled his eyes, then leaned in to give a quick kiss on the lips before shooting off their separate ways.

* * *

 **F - 'She's gone off for yet another test  
'She also has made me go and get some food in me'** Velvet let out a short, breathy giggle on reading that, replying as best she could in her current state. All three members of CFVYN not at the hospital were worrying not only for their oldest teammate, but also for Fox as well. Coco even went as far as to wonder aloud if either Neo or Fox had eaten, because they can't go on for long without something in them. But of the three, Velvet was worrying the most. She was the closest to Fox in the team before Neo came along, and she was probably the first friendly face Neo had seen since she was last at her parents' place when she woke from the hospital their first time. Plus, her hormones were still all over the place from the pregnancy, so her body still trying to readjust itself after it all and as such was still rather emotional from time to time.

 **V - 'She knows what's good for you.  
'If you're sitting around doing nothing, your going to get hungry. If, and I'm not saying this ****will** **happen, but if something bad happens, you're going to be more emotional if you're hungry.'**

 **F - 'Yes Mooom ;)'**

 **V - 'Enough with the sass mister, go eat!  
'And stay strong for one another x'**

 **F - 'Sure  
'Thanks for keeping me sane Velv x'**

 **V - 'You never were sane to begin with ;P'**

 **F - 'Ha ha.'** After finding some food and wolfing it down so that he wouldn't miss anything, Fox came back to the waiting room with Neo already waiting for him there, her face a little downcast.

' _Lien for your thoughts, stranger?_ '

' _Well… I keep getting approached by these weird men in here. It's always the same; guys in robes, girls in robes, it's like a cult._ '

' _Those are the doctors._ '

' _Is that their cult name?_ '

' _They're not a cult, Neo._ '

' _Sure. I'll let you believe what you want to, but_ _ **I**_ _see through their lies._ ' The couple silently laughed at their back and forth, Neo resting her head on her husband's shoulder and taking his hand in hers. ' _I'm scared Fox._ '

' _Yeah, this is pretty terrifying._ '

' _I don't even know what to do now. Like, where do we go from here?_ ' She tried finding an answer in his eyes, but all she saw was a look she recognised. One that mirrored her own eyes perfectly.

Complete and utter uncertainty.

* * *

"Mrs. Alistair?" a doctor called after nearly thirty minutes of nothing. Her head shot up to look the doctor in the eyes, but judging by the expression he was trying to hide she could tell that this wasn't going to be pleasant. "Please, follow me. You too sir, it'll be best if both of you are present."

Despite nothing bad being explicitly said, the very manner in which the couple were approached already had warning bells and sirens going off in her head. And as they were going off, the world around them dulled down.

There were no full sounds anymore, only muffled echoes of what they should be. Colours also ceased to be, favouring black, white and the hundreds of shades of grey in between the two extremes. Time seemed to have crawled to a standstill.

Everything was just going wrong for Neo, and as reality came back to her as she took the first step, she felt powerless. She felt scared. Worst of all, even with the one person in her life who would be there for her through thick and thin by her side, she felt alone.

They walked into a solitary room away from the bustling of the main hospital chaos, furnished with nothing more than a small desk on one wall and two chairs; one for the doctor, one for the patient. Neo didn't need to be told, she walked in and sat in the chair furthest from the desk. Fox stood behind her, and the doctor sat opposite.

"Mrs. Alistair, the doctors and I have run through various tests with you today following your trip to Shroud Village Surgery late this morning. As an individual, you are functioning perfectly normally with a few minor oddities in there, but that's to be expected - we are flawed creatures after all. It's only once we took tests other than physical and started examining _inside_ that something cropped up. From your description to Doctor Satirev earlier, you are fully aware of your _heterochromia borealis._ What you don't know is the full extent of it, and that's why you're here now." The couple looked on, equal parts stunned and shocked.

"Allow me to explain. Your _heterochromia borealis_ was aggravated by the very early stages of the drug we use with cases nowadays to unprecedented new heights, and as a result you lost the use of your voice, with no way to regrow it and the only option being to have a voice box transplant.

"But I digress. What doctors didn't know about then was the effect it would have on you as an adult."

" _What do you mean?_ " she asked, panicked.

"I'm… I'm sorry, I don't understand Sign. Perhaps I should get-"

"She asked 'What do you mean?'"

"Thank you for that. "Well, in the bluntest of terms, the _heterochromia borealis,_ when it started reacting negatively, destroyed your uterus and rendered your fallopian tubes useless. And much like your voice box, the damage done is irreversible. Due to that, as it stands right now you are incapable of conceiving."

Her eyes went white. Not ivory, or cream.

Pure white.

They had never done that before.

Then again, she'd never had news quite like this before. The tears appeared in an instant, and she was sobbing uncontrollably into Fox chest. He wasn't fairing much better, tears falling from his eyes too. Their dream of becoming a family was shattered in one fell swoop.

"I truly am sorry for having to bring you this news," the doctor added. "There are things you can do if you still want children, the most notable being adoption-" Even with teary eyes, Neo managed a stare so deadly that he stopped what he was saying immediately, choking on his own words. "... But, I see that now is not the best time to discuss this. I can either give a few pamphlets to you now, or post them to you to look at in a few days' time." Neo simply rose to her feet and left.

"Post, please. Our address should be on record now." And with that, Fox went after his heartbroken wife.

* * *

Radio silence, unless ordered upon people, was normally bad. Well, not always "bad", but at the very least it was always "not positive". And with the third hour approaching where there was nothing from either one of their friends, CVY were getting immensely worried.

"I told him to keep me posted," Velvet huffed, staring out of the front window, wishing that that action alone would get them home faster.

"Maybe he's been taken to do some tests," Yatsuhashi suggested, "and that is why he can't message you."

"But three _hours?_ Something big must have happened to not respond for three whole hours."

"I agree, but we can't stay here doing nothing for much longer. I don't think my heart can take it." The Faunus wandered over to her towering teammate, leaning against his chest.

"It'll be alright Velvet. I'm sure there is a reason."

"Anything?" Coco asked, coming downstairs after putting Clementine in her cot for a nap. Yatsuhashi glanced up at her, then shook his head. "Urgh! What's taking them so long?" She moved around to the sofa they were both on, leaning against Yatsuhashi's chest just as her mate was.

"Am I everyone's pillow now?"

"Well yeah, I thought you'd know that by now," Coco quipped.

"Just because I am a big guy does not make me a pillow."

"Sure it-" the jingling of keys outside broke the conversation as all three people stood and went to the door, seeing Fox and Neo coming in. "Thank the Gods, we've been so worried about you! What happened?" Neo ignored all the fuss they were trying to make of her, teleporting herself halfway up the stairs to avoid pushing past them.

"Neo?" Fox grabbed the caramel haired woman's arm, halting her ascent. "Fox, the hell's going on?" He said nothing, looking up as his wife skulked into their room and shut the door.

"Is the baby alright?" Velvet asked, sounding more worried than she probably intended to be.

"T… the baby's not coming."

"What?"

"Neo's DAG Syndrome destroyed her fallopian tubes and uterus. The doctors didn't really pay it much attention before, and by the time she reached adolescence it had already been gone too long to try and fix. She can't have kids." He broke down, crying into Yatsuhashi's chest in the hallway. " _We_ can't have children." Coco felt her own eyes watering up, so she ran up the stairs and found Neo face down on her and Fox's shared bed, cuddling a pillow for comfort. The fashionista didn't even say anything to her, she just walked over to the bed and kneeled down on it, placing a hand on the mute's shoulder. In a flash, the grief stricken woman shot up and throw a strong hook to her leader's chest, one she had to block to avoid getting smacked across the room from the force. The next punch was a hammer fist down, again aimed at Coco's chest, but there was less impact behind it, so she let it hit her and used her Aura to nullify the sting of the impact.

Hit after hit, Neo kept going as tears cascaded down her face unabated. Eventually, Neo collapsed into Coco, who was crying just as hard as her friend all throughout the ordeal, and just bawled.

The outpour of negative emotions from around her caused Clementine to start crying, having gained a slight link to her two Moms' emotions. Neo heard and instinctively teleported to her crib side to pick her up and comfort her. Coco, also instinctively, reached out to stop her, even getting as far as to grab her arm to prevent her from doing anything.

But the second she did, and Neo looked at her, pleading through teary eyes to just let her hold the months old little Faunus in her arms, she relented. Neo cradled Clementine in her arms, moving to and fro as she softly rubbed the base of her rabbit ears that had now grown to near full prominence in the four months since she was born. The action caused the little girl to start making affirmative noises to say she was enjoying it, bringing a small smile to the face of the tri coloured woman.

Before she knew it, four pairs of arms cocooned her in a hug that she was more than happy to sink into as they all cried, some more than others, at the utter destruction of their oldest teammate's dream.

* * *

One: Endgame is amazing. I bawled like a child the first time, and cried at more respectable levels the second. **NO SPOILERS!**

Two: The Doctor's names all have hidden meanings. As I wrote them on the first draft and not when I redid the whole thing, I can't tell you what they all meant.

Three: I hinted at this a LOOONG time ago. Don't believe me? Re-read Chapter 29 "Again" again. Third paragraph in.

* * *

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	100. oh

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

The door was shut.

Still.

Fox and Neo's trip to the doctor had been four days ago and the illusionist hadn't been seen for prolonged periods of time since.

All she had done in that time was remain in her room, sat in her baggy pyjama bottoms and oversized t-shirt she only wore when she went to bed, and ate ice cream straight from the tub. Most of the time she left the room was to go to the toilet or to restock on ice cream. There were some noteworthy exceptions though.

One the first night, everyone went downstairs after they had sufficiently cried their worth and tried to get normal conversation going with Neo and Fox, but the former wasn't having any of it. She excused herself and took off up to bed, Fox apologising and pursuing after her. At the door though, the copper haired man was promptly shut out as he was trying to enter.

"Neo, open the door." He was met with resounding silence, both of the physical and mental kind. "Hunny, please. I know we've had a bad day, but we _both_ need sleep." Again, silence. "Look, Neo, I don't want to argue over something like this, so can we-" The door suddenly swung open and Neo was standing there, her hidden blade pulled out, pointing the tip directly at Fox's neck.

"... Couch?" She nodded once. "Okay." She shut the door on him.

The other time happened just last night. Fox had been allowed back into their room to sleep after two nights on the couch, but he still respected his wife's privacy and remained quiet about anything relating to the incident.

If anything, all he said to her since he'd been back in was not much more than "Good morning" and "Goodnight".

But last night, Fox heard Clementine start to cry in bed. He remembered the holiday he and Neo had and why they had to have it, so he stayed back. But no sooner had that thought gone through his head, he heard a shattering of glass next to him and the covers fell back to the bed as the body that once was there suddenly disappeared.

Both Coco and Velvet heard the same shattering and were up in a flash, the latter even calling their child's name. Neo saw them looking at her, so she took her leave instantly and teleported back to her room, at which point Fox had already jumped out of bed and was running across the hall to look out for the little girl.

The one-sided conversation that followed didn't exactly leave the household broken, but there were definitely going to be a couple of trust issues in the immediate future.

Which leads us to now.

"She's been in there all day again," Yatsuhashi commented from their dining room table, the original members of CFVY all there with warm drinks in hand to combat a particularly cold spell they've been having recently in Vale. Clementine was in her little swinging chair next to her Faunus Mother.

"She won't budge though," Fox added as he stared into his half-finished and cooling cup, his solemn face reflecting back in the murky brown liquid of his drink, "Oum knows we've tried. Every single one of us have, but she's just going to stay up there."

"Well she can't stay up there forever," their leader affirmed, "we've got missions again in a week, High-B Tier stuff to get us back into the swing of things, and if we don't start going on them we'll get the support for us being out of action wiped instantly as opposed to gradually, and then we'll _really_ be screwed."

"We could just go on them without her." CFY stopped to look at Velvet like she'd just kicked a puppy - not that any one of them knew what that looked like personally. "What? We need to think things through logically. If Neo isn't going to join us on missions that we _need_ to do in order to stay financially afloat for a while, then why can't we go and get some done ourselves? Besides, they're B Tiers." The Faunus indicated to the two men at the table. "You two did B Tiers with Neo for a while when we were waiting for a little someone to arrive, weren't we~?" She turned her attention to the little girl, her timbre changing to one that sounded far more positive and upbeat than it previously was. The direct address caused the smaller Faunus to let out a small giggle whilst she tried to grab her Mommy, something that brought a much more genuine smile to her face as she leaned down and rubbed her nose against her daughter's.

"You need to remember Velvet that we aren't a four piece anymore. Team CFVYN is a five person team."

"I know that-"

"Then we need to _act_ like it!" She took a final swig of her coffee, finishing it off, before readdressing the other three. "I really hate doing this, especially when we're not actually on a mission, but if you're not going to listen, then you need to start listening sharpish. Team CFVY may have made a name for itself in our First Year and Second Year, but when CFVY ceased to be and CFVYN took its place, we've done so much more. A lot of that, no offense to you three, was down to Neo and what she brought to the table.

"Yes, I agree with you Bun-Bun, we have completed B Tier, heck, even some A Tier missions, with one of us absent since we became Team CFVYN, but that was when we had no choice to do so. But this? _This_ is something where we _do_ have a choice. We leave Neo here, and we're leaving behind 20% of the team. We're not having her stay behind; we would be _leaving her_ behind. What sort of teammates would we be if we did that?" Save the odd noise from Clementine, the room was silent.

"I'm sorry for not thinking straight Coco."

"Don't beat yourself up, hunny-bun," the leader said, walking over and placing a kiss between the Faunus' Rabbit ears, "you were thinking about us as a family, and I kind of see that, but you weren't looking at everything. This party of sev-" she caught herself, but not before the damage had already been done; Fox sighed and slumped his head almost in shame at the number, "party of _six_ needs to go on, we need to fight harder every time and still come out as winners.

"Executive decision: we need to get Neo on to these first missions. This is something we can't ignore, she'll need as much distraction as possible until she's back to normal, or as close to 'back to normal' as she can be, given everything." As she rounded everything off, she hauled her baby girl into her arms, cradling her. "All of us have a duty to protect Clementine from harm. As it stands right now, unless anyone objects, that extends to Neo too." They all nodded in agreement, all except Clementine, who cooed instead. Coco wanted to believe her baby was cooing in agreement, but deep down she knew the cooing was just because she found out that could use her vocals, and Gods was she going to use them.

Unbeknownst to everyone present, Neo had created a mirror illusion around herself to make her body practically invisible. She had been standing in the hallway the entire time, listening to the group discuss her and… actually making some very decent observations and calls about it all.

' _They do care about you,_ ' she chastised herself as she snuck her way back up the stairs again.

" _I think she'll come around soon,_ " Fox signed, having heard her little aside. The others acknowledged but did not speak of it for fear she was still within earshot.

* * *

Despite the fact the door was left slightly ajar, Neo still wasn't feeling like interacting with anyone the following day. Fox came into the room the evening before, got ready for bed and said goodnight; just as he'd done before. He'd woken up, wished her a good morning, got dressed and left the room as he'd also done before. And as much as she really didn't want to be with anyone at the moment, she really did miss people.

But she wasn't ready.

At least, not for her family. These five were her family, but they were here all the time. Right now, that wasn't who she needed. She needed to see someone who she was close to, but who wasn't around too often to know everything at the drop of a hat.

She needed to see Maggie again.

So for the first time in the past few days, Neo got herself out of her sleepwear and made her way to the bathroom.

Everyone else was up at this point, including Clementine. She, Velvet and Coco were all going out shopping to get some more food for the week, but stopped in the doorway when they heard the water pump fire into life and the shower coming on.

Coco offered a grin to her teammates, asking for them to "Keep us posted", before the Mates and their daughter left the house to go shopping.

About 25 minutes later, as Fox was hoovering the main hall and Yatsuhashi doing some work on one of the cabinets they believe has a screw loose inside, Neo made her way down the stairs. She wasn't wearing anything overtly fancy - a baby pink t-shirt under a large grey hoodie and some raw denim coloured jeans with deeper grey pumps - and her makeup was very minimalistic, but Fox was just happy to see her making an effort today. Small steps forward were better than none taken at all.

"Hey," he said, switching the vacuum off to be heard. She responded with a ghost of a smile, barely making eye contact. "You heading out?"

' _I was going to go see Maggie,_ ' came her answer, picking up the keys to the smaller of the group's two vehicles. When the couple found out Neo couldn't have children, she was so distraught that she made a beeline home, forgoing the car and leaving it in the car park. Velvet and Fox went to go pick it up the next day, having to apologise for leaving it there. Fox could drive the car, he just didn't have the licence to do it legally, so Velvet was leading him home in one car as he drove behind in the other, all while going very carefully to not draw suspicion to himself.

"Okay. Any guesses on when you'll be home?" She shook her head.

' _I'll be as long as I will, I won't promise anything._ '

"Okay. As long as you're happy and safe, that's all I ask." He crossed the gap and hugged her, planted a loving kiss on her forehead. "I love you Neo. Don't forget that." She melted into the embrace, forming the first proper smile she'd had in a week.

' _I won't._ ' With that, they broke off and went about their tasks once more; Fox cleaning, Neo going out to see her friend.

* * *

Coco and Velvet were walking down the fruit and veg aisle in the supermarket when Coco's Scroll went off.

 **F - 'She's up and out. Went to go see Maggie, but doesn't know when she'll be back'**

 **C - 'Thanks for the update x'** "She's gone to see Maggie."

"Good; she's always been good to her, maybe she can help her some more." On hearing her Momma saying Maggie's name, the Faunus child smiled and made positive noises. "What was that~? Did Momma say Auntie Maggie's name~?" The child cooed again. "She _did~!_ "

Coco couldn't help but stare. "Gods, I love you."

"I know, but don't let on." She smiled back cheekily, making the fashionista's grin grow even wider.

* * *

Maggie wasn't at work today and wasn't expecting anyone, so she was surprised when the bell to her flat went off.

"Hello?" Nobody answered. But the bell started ringing again. A long ring followed by a short one, then another short one after a pause, then three longer rings again after another pause. Morse Code: the only way that Neo could say that she was downstairs. "Hey Neo. Come on up, I'll buzz you in."

Three minutes later, there was a knock on Maggie's actual door. She'd dressed herself semi-properly - having only been lounging around in just an oversized t-shirt and panties before - and now wore some jogging bottoms, a more form fitting, long sleeved top and a bra underneath it. She decided that brushing her hair and applying makeup was a pointless exercise though; Neo had seen her post-coitus on more than one occasion, she wasn't fussed about how she looked.

"Hey there Ne… o…" The way Neo stood outside Maggie's door made her look small, not because she is, but because of how she stood and looked. She did not make eye contact at all, instead favouring the carpet below her. Her shoulders were drawn in as far as they'd physically go, and her hands cupped on another in front of her, fiddling with her wedding ring as a way of keeping herself preoccupied. And what shocked the Arctic Fox Faunus most of all was the single streak of black from her right eye where her thinly applied mascara had run from her own tears.

Knowing what works with Neo, Maggie turned around and pushed her bum out towards the woman slightly, letting her tail wiggle in front of the tri coloured woman's face. In almost a trance like state, Neo stuck her arms out and started to hug the tail, rubbing her hand gently along it, resting her cheek against the soft fur. Maggie let out an airy chuckle before taking tiny steps back into her flat. Not wanting to let the fluffy tail get away, Neo followed it inside, still stroking it as she walked. Once through the front door, Maggie had to loop behind her to shut it, as she knew there was no getting the pink, brown and ivory limpet off her tail once attached unless it wanted to let go. Waddling further into the flat, they came to the woman's main room. It housed a moderately sized tele, along with a cabinet for some personal things and booze, a couple of coffee tables situated either side of her three person settee in the middle of the room - quite literally the centrepiece of her space - and a small but functioning dinner table, meant for three, yet usually used by just one. Maggie waddled to one end of her sofa and stopped, but she let her tail continue moving. Eventually, she brought her tail around the front of her so that she could grab Neo herself. The second she did, she grinned and threw herself onto the settee, taking the mute with her and landing on her side with Neo snuggled up close.

"I'm not letting go until you spill." That was a fact, and they both knew it. One time, Maggie had to call Fox and tell him that Neo wouldn't be coming home because she refused to talk for hours on end, and that it was probably not going to change. It didn't change for a good hour or so more after that call to him.

This time though, her words were a trigger. The floodgates opened again after days of being barred up, and Neo was crying into Maggie's chest. Carolina blue eyes shot open in surprise as the tears suddenly appeared.

"Neo, what's wrong? Nothing normally shakes you like this." Maggie was worried, and rightfully so; she'd not heard from Neo really in months, not because they didn't want to talk, but because there was nothing to talk about. The last time she'd seen her was after they'd gotten back from Vacuo, excluding any time she was asked to babysit Clementine when CFVYN went out as a team, those were all passing hellos and the odd "how was she?".

 **'** **Kids'** was all that Neo typed out on her Scroll.

"Is this about yours?" the Faunus asked, taking care not to push too hard if the woman in her arms didn't want to say, figuratively speaking. But she did answer, nodding at the question. "Did… did you miscarry?" The smaller woman clenched her hands at the word, forgetting that she was holding her best friend's tail in one. "Ow! My tail still exists." The tight grip loosened, and Neo recoiled a bit, leaning back to place a caring kiss on the fur. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked. Neo smiled through her tears, and the sight made Maggie feel so much better, even before the original question had been answered. "But I take it that was a 'yes' then?" Neo's smile went away, trading instead to a frown.

 **'** **It's not a miscarriage if you can't carry to begin with.'** The words on the screen took their time sinking into the Arctic Fox's brain. Eventually, the gravity of the sentence dawned on her and she stared back, gasping as she did so. **'When I was a kid, I got given a shot meant to calm my DAG Syndrome. It worked, until it didn't. It made my Aura go crazy and it took my voice. It also destroyed my uterus and fallopian tubes, but I didn't know that until recently because I've never needed them before.'**

Maggie felt herself filling up with sorrow, just as she imagined the woman in her arms felt when she got the news. Neo typed out one more thing before crying again. Maggie had to take the Scroll from her friend to read it, but all it did was confirm in four horrible words what she had said before.

 **'** **I can't have children'**

* * *

It took an hour of cradling Neo to break her out of her stupor, but eventually she managed to bring a smile to her face that lasted for longer than a second. Once she was happy and willing to do so, the couple went out to the local corner shop and stocked up on essentials for their 'Chase the Bad Away' Day they _were_ going to have; Maggie made it abundantly clear that Neo was not leaving her sight until she was completely happy again. So, they got themselves a really cheesy comedy that neither of them had seen, a bag of popcorn each and, naturally, two tubs of ice cream.

Their movie date started with a nice long movie that, whilst they both had seen it, was there for the soul purpose of getting them both to the state of blubbering messes on the sofa. Plus, it gave them a catalyst for both of them to cry themselves of dry of tears.

"Man," Maggie sniffled as the credits finished, a mound of tissues by her side, "I know he does mostly horror, but you got to admit, King is fantastic."

 **'** **Yup. I never thought I'd enjoy The Emerald Kilometre when I first saw it. Boy I was wrong. I still love it.'**

"Preaching to the choir on that one. Now, since we've cried ourselves out of tears, who wants to laugh their asses off?" Neo raised her hand like a kid at school wanting to be picked, stretching herself as far as she could manage to do so. "I want to see it with… Neo." Even though she was alone, Neo still felt accomplished for being picked, cheering and throwing herself at Maggie for a tackle hug and a loving kiss on the cheek. "Watch it missy, that ring on your finger means something, let's not go ruining its meaning." The illusionist stared at the Faunus with a cheeky grin, wiggling her eyebrows and shrugging at the comment.

Once she was done prying the woman off her, they put the new movie on. It was one they'd seen had been circulating around for a while but neither managed to get around to seeing.

 **'** **Miss Frio, are you sure I can watch this movie? It says it's R, and I'm not old enough for R movies. Mommy and Daddy said so.'**

"Oh, little Orchid… I don't give a shit!" Neo faked a gasp as the Faunus smirked. "You're going to watch this movie, and you're going to love it, and at the end, you're probably going to know a whole bunch of new words to tell your Mommy and Daddy." Neo couldn't keep the act up as she silently started laughing. "Hey! No wasting your laughs," she said, clicking play, "let's see what Deadpool's _really_ like."

108 minutes later, both women had laughed so hard that it was hurting.

"That was amazing," the Faunus commented, standing up and stretching as Neo played with her Scroll, "why hadn't we seen that before?" Neo shrugged. "Right, are you feeling better now?" Neo nodded. "If I were to kick you out now, which I _might_ do, would you go home and speak to your team?" Neo hesitated for a second before nodding. "Good. Do you want to go home now?" Neo didn't confirm or deny, she just stood up, prompting the host to do the same. "Well then, let's get you home then."

The mute started walking, but jumped to Maggie as she got close, wrapping her arms around her middle and teleporting the pair of them to her room, the sudden displacement causing the Arctic Fox to stumble and fall conveniently onto her bed. "Oh, ha ha. You got me. Well do-mmph!" She was stopped by a pair of soft lips pressing against her own. As much as she knew she shouldn't do this (Neo was married, for Oum's sake!), she found herself melting into the kiss just a little bit too easily.

It was stopped, however, when a very distinctive saxophone solo started playing beside her. Her carolina blue eyes opened to stare at the screen, seeing a man with impeccable hair staring off to one side as the cover. As she looked back at the perpetrator, who was grinning like a madwoman, she closed her eyes and mimicked the same movement she'd seen twice before in the last two hours.

'Wham!' the mute mouthed, unable to copy the quote exactly.

"You teleported us to my room just so you could pull the 'Wham!' joke? … Got to give you points for committing to a punchline."

 **'** **I was thinking we could recreate more than the "Wham!" bit ;)'**

"Neo…" she groaned, pushing the smaller woman up off her. "You are married. We can't just 'go at it' anymore." She went to type something on her Scroll. " _Even if_ you and Fox have a 'Semi-Open Relationship'." She stopped typing. "Why?"

 **'** **Why what?'**

"Don't play dumb. There's always a reason with you, and that's not necessarily a good thing all the time; I'd just like to know. You have a husband who can fulfil your needs much better than I can, if that's what you're after." Blue eyes stared at pink and brown, two colours that switched multiple times in the stare as a form of intimidation. It didn't work on Maggie and, it never really had, so in the end Neo conceded.

 **'** **Ever since I found out I'm barren, the mere thought of being intimate with Fox became a weird sensation. I don't want to be thinking that. I want to be with someone who can enjoy themselves as I do and not have to worry about anything like this.'** Even though there was no guarantee that Maggie would be on the same word as what Neo guessed she was, the tri coloured woman circled her own belly on "this".

"Fox honestly would give a shit about that. I know if _I_ were a dude I wouldn't. You miss out on the final stage of unprotected sex, that being pregnancy, but everything else remains the same. Don't let one thing ruin that for you."

With a heavy head and a silent sigh, the short woman typed out a defeated sounding **'Too late for that…'**

"Neo, please. Don't beat yourself up about it." The pink and brown haired woman looked away, not wishing to bring the mood down after such a good couple of hours in front of the tele laughing. "Urgh; one round. That's all. Then I'm taking you straight home and you're talking to your team." Neo smiled at the first bit, then let said smile drop a little on hearing the second bit. "Bitch, I will tie you to a chair and make you."

 **'** **Sounds like a fun idea, but how will you get me talking to my team?'**

"... You are an incorrigible little shit, d'you know that?" She nodded, seeming almost proud at the fact. "If we do that now, you explain everything to them, alright? And the fact we did this too; I don't want your husband losing his shit on hearing we did this behind his back - not that I think he will, but the point still stands." With a thumbs up, Neo threw her top off almost too eagerly and jumped so her back was up against the headrest of the bed. "I worry about you, y'know. You're into some of the weirdest shit."

* * *

Once Neo had been successful delivered home and explained everything to everyone, including what the pair had done and Neo's reasons behind it, Maggie went home and jumped straight onto her Scroll. She had a little bit of research to do.

Finding what she wanted to in about 40 minutes, double checking to ensure the credibility, she made a call.

* _Good evening, Haven General Hospital, how can I help you?_ *

"Hi there, could I get some information from Doctor Otum please?"

* * *

Holy bleep on a bleep sandwich, 100 chapters?! Little over 50,000 story views?! And it's been nearly two _years_ since Chapter 1 went up as well?!

Like... wow. What am I doing with my life?

Please, can I ask that some of you write a review on how you think this has gone - what you've enjoyed about the story, what's made you stick with it? It'd be great to know - especially with only 10 chapters left to upload after this one. We're in the endgame now.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	101. Beringels and Bombshells

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Mistral has the widest reaching territory in the world.

Seasoned Huntsmen are aware of this fact, as are the High Council members of Mistral; most of the local residents are very proud of this fact and some even like to boast about it a bit. Sadly, as famous as Team CFVYN were for their teamwork, efficiency and ability to balance lives as Huntsmen and family members even as an S Tier Team, they were almost comically unversed in this particular bit of information.

When their mission started ten days ago, they were given the briefing of simply 'Sweep the Sirocco Region and eliminate any threats', with orders to return to the Council in Mistral for a quick debrief before dismissal. Easy enough, shouldn't be that difficult. Now, take into account what I just said.

When the mission started _ten days ago._

Neo had perked up a little bit once the team had all got back into doing missions again after the whole bombshell of Neo's infertility, distracting herself as best as she could. The only thing that was hurt from this whole ordeal was her relationship with Fox. It wasn't as if they were on rocky ground and their marriage was falling apart, it was more that Neo was embarrassed, almost afraid, of being close to and intimate with Fox again, so she kept her distance for the time being.

The Sirocco Region spanned an area around 4/3rds the size of the main city of Vale. And whilst the region itself was home to sparse civilisations, what groups of people there were crammed themselves into very tight spaces, despite the aforementioned abundance of space. One village in particular CFVYN ran into had a population of about 300, but they were all living and working in a space no bigger than half a square kilometre of each other. Fortunately, they weren't all squashed together like sardines when working, they spread out and worked the fields outside of the village walls.

Whilst the Grimm they had to deal with while protecting the village back then were fairly straightforward, what they were currently dealing with was a completely different story.

It was the last village in the Sirocco Region that needed protecting and freeing from an onslaught of Grimm, but said creatures had managed to break their way into the village. This was unlike other places before here where Team CFVYN and a few fighters or willing volunteers in the villages fought hard enough to keep the Grimm out of the walls.

The village they were currently protecting, Ventos, was much larger than most of the others over the past two weeks. It was protected on one side by a large river running through the Region, something too grand for any land based Grimm like Ursa or Beowolves to cross. But that left only one main entrance to the village. And naturally, if you have enough of an offensive on one front, it doesn't matter how strong your defences are, it will break, and enemies will spill in. That was the reality that the people of Ventos and Team CFVYN were currently facing.

"Yatsuhashi! Ursa. On your left," came the automated call over the comms from Neo's headset as she jumped over and kicked a charging Boarbatusk, knocking it to the ground and finishing it with stab to the belly. The tank took head of her call, spying the Ursa Major lumbering towards an unfortunate family of civilians that didn't make it out before the Grimm broke through, trapped in their now destroyed house. Taking a wild guess, the swordsman believed they may see what they thought was an opportunity to escape with very few Grimm around them, and all being dealt with by the Huntsmen, but were met instead by a 9ft bear of bones and death.

"Don't worry girls," the father soothed, "it's going to be alright. If we don't fear it, it won't come any closer." He tried putting on a brave face, but he knew that an Ursa was not the type of Grimm that backed down, especially this close to prey.

"But Daddy," the youngest sobbed, "I'm so scared."

With a breath in, he accepted their fate. Hugging them all closer, he assured them. "I know, baby girl." It reared itself up slowly, ready to crush them with its sheer size and weight, but a deep battle cry rang through the streets and before anything could happen to them there was a distinct sound of metal burying itself in Grimm hide. The youngest pried her eyes open and saw a large sword sticking out of the upper body of the Ursa. Unfortunately, the body was still going to fall on them, and the time it would take for the it to fully disappear would mean that they would have been crushed twice over. Yatsuhashi ran up to their side of the Grimm before that happened, planting his feet and thrusting his hands forward to catch the monster before it killed them. He fought against the combined forces of its weight and gravity before it was eventually reduced to nothing more than blackened ash. Sighing as he spun around, he checked them over.

"Are you all alright?" The young girl ran at his legs, hugging them in relief.

"You saved us! You saved us! Thank you!"

He giggled briefly as her Father spoke, still close to his other daughter and wife. "They're not done yet sweetie, there are still Grimm out there." On cue, Coco called in on comms.

"Yatsu, we've got another couple of Grimm a few streets down from you. That should be most of them on that side. Get them and we can all regroup in the centre again."

"On it Coco." He turned his attention back to the family of four. "Get to one of the smaller entrances, they won't be able to follow you through there. Stay safe until we finish this off." The two parents nodded and ushered their children away with them, but the youngest remained clinging to the giant's leg.

"Will you be alright?" she asked honestly enough.

"I'll be fine. I'm trained to deal with this sort of thing." He cupped her cheek, his hand almost as big as her head, as he wiped a tear away. "You aren't, so you need to get to safety. You can go home once we're done."

"Will you win?"

"Of course we will," he assured, "Huntsmen always win." Four of the five people there knew that to be false, including the one saying it. But his words convinced the little girl they were intended for, and that was more than enough. As she ran off to safety with her family knowing the kind Huntsman was going to win for them all, the olive skinned tank turned about to grab his weapon and make his way to the sighting Coco had pointed out for him a few blocks away.

Fox's boot crashed into the skull of the first Beowolf that attacked him. As the creature crumbled backwards he threw himself up into the air vertically, getting a high vantage point over the battlefield. From where he reached the apex of his flight, he saw that the once imposing sea of black and white had dwindled significantly, and that they were on the home stretch. The tail of one of the last, if not the last, Deathstalker terrorising the village flew through the air to come and meet him mid fall. He rolled his body backwards in the air, letting the sharp golden stinger whiz past him as he descended back to the ground. CFVYN's brawler let the Scorpion Grimm retract its tail and go for another crushing attack on him, and with a simple hop backwards the golden spike ploughed itself firmly into the ground. Spying the perfect opportunity, Fox fired shots right at the joint on the tail breaking the golden end off with a painful cry of agony from the Grimm, its now severed and significantly blunter tail swinging around wildly, even hitting a few other Grimm as it did so.

The thumping of something on the ground caught the ex-blind man's attention. A Beringel was chasing down Velvet, who was dodging every attack thrown at her by the oversized Gorilla, albeit barely on more than one occasion. Fox could tell by the way it was attacking her that it was a juvenile, so its strikes were much less coordinated than an experienced one of its kind would be.

Fox saw an opportunity for both himself and Velvet to be rid of their respective troublesome Grimm.

"Velvet!" he called. Dodging the lunging attack the Beringel intended for her, its giant fists smashing into the ground and breaking apart the concrete beneath them, the Faunus turned to her teammate to see what he was calling her name for. "Two for one?"

"Right!"

"Get it over here, try and make it attack you and slam onto the Deathstalker." Fox ran towards the stinger in the ground as Velvet made a beeline for the Deathstalker, Beringel hot on her tail. With it gaining ground fast she knew that this was a one shot opportunity, one she reckoned she wouldn't be getting as she spotted the shadow rising up to slam down once again on her before she was even halfway across the distance.

It was times like this that the Faunus was thankful they had a teleporter on their team.

"Thanks Neo," Velvet sighed in relief after the sudden snap in, snap out move the mute just pulled to stop the Rabbit becoming a crimson pancake on the floor, "I owe you a favour when we're done." The ice cream woman grinned, ready to tap a button and get an automated message to the chocolate brown eyed woman. " _Not_ a sexual favour; I know how your mind works." The grin faded; she was caught.

With Neo promptly shattering, Velvet continued running towards the recovering Scorpion monster as Fox managed to dislodge the tail from the ground and now held the awkwardly shaped object in his arms.

Catching up once again, the Beringel jumped at Velvet, aiming to smash her once and for all. But she had other ideas, having made it to the recovering Deathstalker and positioned itself on its back. As the Gorilla leapt in the air, Fox ran in and jumped as well, throwing the stinger up to Velvet who also jumped, flying over the Beringel's trajectory.

The Gorilla Grimm smashed its bony fists down, crushing its Scorpion brethren. Fox and Velvet met in the air, halting each other's forward momentum. The stinger positioned itself at the perfect position and angle for the rest of their plan to work, with Fox firing with his gauntlets to shoot himself and his Faunus teammate down to the ground at speed, their four feet colliding with the severed end of the golden barb and driving the business end into, and straight through, the exposed skin of the Beringel's neck. Only a few seconds had passed, but that time was more than enough to win their battle.

"Get down!" shouted another familiar voice, Fox and Velvet complying as Coco rained hell upon the approaching wave of Grimm around them. When the barrels stopped smoking and whirring, she retracted her weapon and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Looks like that is all of them."

"I am never going to get used to hearing that damn thing," Coco commented, referring to the mechanical voice of Neo's headset, "it's… not you."

" _It never will be,_ " she signed. A grunt came from behind a nearby building and three Beowolves came flying out from behind it, two dissolving before they came close to hitting anything else, the third not so lucky, and Yatsuhashi strided into view with his weapon over his shoulder.

"I've taken out the last of them my way. I assume that means we're done?" Coco nodded, taking off back towards where they had been sending all the civilians of Ventos so they could fight without having to worry about them getting hurt or worse.

"... Not even a 'good job'?" Fox mentioned at the unusual behaviour of his leader, "is something wrong with her Velvet?"

"I think so. She's probably just tired; I'll go check." The truth was, Velvet knew why she did that. As did Yatsuhashi. Fox knew part of the reason, but not the whole story. The only person on the team left completely in the dark was Neo, and that was exactly how they wanted it to go.

* * *

' _Fox._ '

"Yeah?"

' _Why are we here?_ ' The team had been dropped off far from where Neo had been expecting to be right now. The plan, as far as she was aware, was to get to the council in Mistral and inform them of their mission's completion so that they could be paid as soon as, then to head home, relax for a day, then find another mission for them to keep themselves occupied for a little while longer.

She most certainly was not expecting to be jumping off the Bullhead to be greeted by the Mistral Hospital.

"I don't know." Neo had been in a relationship with Fox for long enough now to know exactly when he was lying or withholding the truth from her - now being one such occasion - so she tried again.

' _Fox._ '

"Yes Neo?"

' _Why. Are. We. Here? And I am_ _ **not**_ _taking "I don't know" for an answer, because I know that you know the reason. So, spill._ '

"I… uhh…"

"Alright, enough," the beret wearing leader ordered, saving Fox from having to bullshit an answer that he'd have to explain away later. "We're here because someone needed to check up on you."

" _And we couldn't have gone to Vale Hospital for this because…?_ "

"Because we're here now, and this may be a little bit time sensitive." Coco continued heading to the hospital, now at an advanced pace. Everyone else followed, although Neo was still questioning everything about this whole thing. That was, until they got inside and saw:

"Hey guys, about time you showed up. A certain someone was a little restless on the way here, even through nap time." The small woman let her eyes flick to dual brown in confusion as she saw the Arctic Fox Faunus get up from her chair in the reception area of the Mistral Hospital, baby Clementine in a little grey carrier.

"Aww~! Were you causing Auntie Maggie grief~?" The child smiled when she saw her mothers' faces and heard her Mommy's voice, extending her arms out to greet them.

"Do you want a cuddle Clemmy Clem~? You _do~?_ Come 'ere." The child's Mama reached down and pulled the baby out of her carrier, her clean cream and white coloured outfit starkly contrasting against the dirtied earthier colours her parents were sporting.

"How was she otherwise?" Velvet asked as Coco cradled their growing child.

"An angel; it's scary to think that she's your offspring." Both parents resented that statement, saying "Hey!" in chorus at their fair haired friend.

"To be fair, she does have trace amounts of my DNA in there, so that's why she's probably so peaceful." All three women looked at the team giant with scepticism. He just shrugged at that. Maggie's glaring was interrupted when her Scroll buzzed in her coat pocket.

 **N - 'Mind explaining to me why you're here, because I feel like I'm the only one of us out of the loop.'** When the Faunus glanced up at the ice cream woman, her arms were folded, and her facial expression just screamed impatience.

"Alright, if you _must_ know." Neo simply made an expression that said, 'You're kidding, right?', prompting Maggie to skip to the point. "There's a doctor here called Doctor Otum. I wanted you to speak with him, he's an expert in his field."

 **N - 'Why can't I see a doctor back in Vale? Why do I even need to be here at all? Doctors, Hospitals and I don't mix well anymore. I don't want us to.'**

"I'm giving you a chance!" she nearly cried out, but restrained herself at the last second. Still, the raised voice turned a few heads. Understandably confused at the sudden outburst of emotions, Neo was in the process of typing when a man walked into the reception calling her name. Making her way over, the man - a normal human as far as she could see with deep blue eyes and mousy brown hair - smiled as she approached.

"Are you Mrs. Alistair?" She nodded, also signing her response. His apologetic smile told her what his words were about to.

"I'm afraid I do not know much Sign Language, so that medium of communication is null and void to me. But I knew that anyway; Miss Frio and I have been talking to one another for the past couple of months about you." Naturally, Neo shot a quizzical look at her best friend, trying to determine why she would be talking to some stranger, a _doctor_ no less, about her for months on end. "Now, let's take this somewhere a little more private. I'd like Miss Frio to accompany me, and Mr. Alistair is welcome to join us as well if you would like him to." Without even thinking on it, Neo nodded and reached back for Fox to walk up and take her hand, Maggie following closely behind.

"Good luck," Velvet called behind them, earning a smile from the Arctic Fox Faunus.

"Now," the doctor asked as the two women sat down, Fox standing behind his wife with his hands on her shoulders, their wedding rings adorning their fingers once more - they both take them off during mission for fear of snagging, as do Velvet and Coco, "how much has Miss Frio told you of why you're here prior to what we're doing now?"

"She only told me that we were coming here," Fox mentioned off-handedly, "not the exact reasons why. As for Neo, I'm pretty sure based on her reactions before coming in, she was told nothing. … Yeah, she said she was told nothing."

"Interesting. Why would that be, Miss Frio? Is it because of the reasons you explained to me before?" She nodded, paying laser precision focus to him when he spoke and then anything else on the right side of the room when he wasn't. Basically, she felt guilty about not telling Neo anything, and as such was avoiding eye contact with her altogether. "Well, I shall explain. I specialise in a very specific field, which is why your friend here must have approached me as she did. She explained your situation as best as she could initially, going only off of the information she had been told by you."

Neo noticed the minute shifts in his posture ever since they got into the room. This man hardly moved at all, not worrying about waving his arms around to emphasise points and instead sitting with his fingers clasped together, elbows resting on his thighs. When he leaned in after what he had just said, Neo naturally felt like this was important because of how he had presented himself beforehand, so she paid closer attention, and she was impressed; not many people could make her feel comfortable and confident that she could speak with them in such a short space of time.

"I am a surgeon, specialising specifically in transplants. Maggie here contacted me and explained how you and your husband tried to have children but couldn't due to your lack of a healthy and properly functioning uterus, correct?" The mute looked at her friend with a sense of betrayal - she really didn't want this to be public information, even to a doctor. There was a small part of her that regretted telling the Faunus they failed to conceive. Equally, that would have been a pointless effort; Maggie knew that they'd tried for kids when in Vacuo, she even bet on it.

Doctor Otum was looking for an answer from her, seeing whether she would respond. Even when she didn't, her silence was telling enough, and he continued on as if she had answered. "There is a procedure - it's not very common and has admittedly had a minimal success rate, but still we can hope - where the uterus and other necessary parts are removed from a donor and transplanted into the recipient's body. Your body, Orchid, if you say yes." The mute woman rose to her feet in a panic, heading straight out the door. Fox was hot on her heels, planting his hands firmly on her shoulders.

"Neo, it's alright. You're alright. Everything's going to be okay." The woman struggled to swallow, the air suddenly thick and horrible to try and consume. Everything inside her head was swimming around, bumping into the sides and causing her head to ache.

' _Breathe, Neo,'_ she told herself, ' _breathe._ ' In. Out. In. Out. Her erratic breathing had calmed down a lot, and by this point she was thinking with a much clearer head than minutes ago.

"What're you thinking?" Fox asked.

' _…_ _Surgery… I've… never really considered that…_ '

"Exactly. We might be able to have a shot at family."

' _I don't know, it seems… weird. Having part of someone else inside of me._ '

' _So you hated all the sex then?_ ' he quipped. She shot him a glare, but it faded instantly when she realised that he made a somewhat valid point. "If we go through with this and everything goes well, you'll have something _growing_ inside of you; you can't escape that."

' _I know,_ ' she admitted, ' _it's just the part beforehand that worries me most._ '

"The sex?"

' _Not the sex, you idiot. I'm looking forward to that again._ '

"Aww, I _do_ matter," he joked. A knock on the head brought him away from his joking demeanour, bringing about only discomfort.

' _The surgery is what I'm worried about._ ' Fox mumbled a "figures" under his breath as Neo continued on. ' _What if things go wrong? What if this fails completely and destroys everything, including any future chances of trying to have kids?_ '

"I understand what you're saying and see what you're concerned about. But, truth be told, we haven't even said 'yes' yet. You're creating problems before anything's even happened, making your decision even harder to make because of all those self-imposed hurdles you have to jump over. Make the decision based on what you want to do, then we'll cross whatever bridges we need to. And we'll do it together." He reached down and clasped their hands together. "Sound good?"

' _Sounds grand. Have I ever told you that you always know exactly what to say to make everything seem alright?_ '

"Once or twice." Her nerves steeled, they re-entered the room, Doctor Otum and Maggie having not really moved since the pair of them left.

"Is everything alright Mrs Alistair?" The tri coloured woman's eyes swapped to dual pink as she looked at Fox, smiling as her head came back to look at Doctor Otum, and she nodded. "Excellent. So, I was going to ask you-"

"She says yes," Fox interrupted. The doctor looked at him with scepticism, then let his eyes drift down to Neo, who at this point had sat back in her chair, and was surprised to see that she was nodding in agreement with her husband.

"Very well then. I shall explain the plan then. We'll get you into surgery and sedate you; it'll be a highly potent strain of anaesthetics we'll use not only because of the type of surgery we're performing but also because of your status as a Huntress - the normal gases we use on civilians only work on Huntsmen when they're in a weakened state, something you most certainly are not. Anyway, once you're under we'll take the healthy uterus out and put it in you, then seal you up. It won't be an immediate thing where you can rush off and try there and then, there will be a period where we need to wait and see whether your body accepts or rejects the new part. You'll be on immunosuppressive medication for this time, just so your body doesn't full on reject it immediately; we still want to give you your chance at a family."

"… She's asking what'll happen if her body rejects the part?"

"Well, in the simplest of terms, that's that. If this doesn't work, I wouldn't want to risk your life trying to find another willing donor and attempting the procedure again. But that's only _if_ it is rejected, there's a 1 in 6 chance of that happening to you." She nodded, understanding what was said and heavily focussing on the word 'if'; there wasn't a guarantee this would go pear shaped, so she'll take that as a win. "We'll know if everything's alright if you start a menstrual cycle, something I presume you've never had to deal with before."

' _Is that the thing Coco and Velvet had happen every month where they'd feel like shit and want to do nothing but eat or kill someone?_ '

' _Basically, yeah._ '

' _Oh joy…_ ' came the sarcastic reply, shaking her head.

"Well, I'm sure your team can help you with that. I'd need three successful menstrual cycles before I can give you the all clear to try and conceive. When that's all done and the baby is coming, we'd need to birth them via caesarean for its and for your own safety. Once you're satisfied with everything and after the successful pregnancy or two, we'll perform a hysterectomy to take the transplanted uterus out and to stop you from being on those immunosuppressants for the rest of your life. Does everything make sense?"

' _Yeah, it does,_ ' she thought, raising her thumb up as a clear sign on her being onboard with it all.

"Fantastic. Now, I'll need you two to remain at the hospital for 48 hours before the operation so that we can keep you both on a very strict diet to minimise potential hiccups or obstructions during the surgery. Now-"

"Wait, why do I have to stay?" Fox inquired for both himself and his wife, "last time I checked, I don't have a uterus to give."

"I am aware of that fact, Mr. Alistair," Doctor Otum laughed, "neither do I. But we aren't the only three in the room." It dawned on them both at the same time what he meant by that, both their heads turning to look at Maggie, soon to be Neo's uterus donor, who finally made eye contact with her again.

* * *

She _did_ say she wishes she could pay Neo back some day.

One last plot thread.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	102. Learning 'em Proper

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

' _You are kidding, right?_ ' she thought. Unfortunately for her, there was no hint at a practical joke anywhere in the doctor's expressions, this was a genuine proposition. The Faunus woman's face locked eyes with her ice cream loving friend, and as pink and brown gazed into carolina blue she could see the conviction behind them, and the reality that what the doctor had hinted at in dialogue was indeed fact.

" _Mags?_ "

The Faunus understood very little Sign Language, and knew how to sign even less than that, but she knew what her own name looked like. The confused look on Neo's face conveyed the emotion behind the question she was ultimately posing, and that hurt the fair haired woman more than she realised it would.

"Miss Frio here has been in contact with me for months as previously mentioned," Doctor Otum explained, getting up to stand by her side, "and in that time she expressed the greatest interest of becoming your donor should you have chosen to go forward with this procedure."

Neo held up her Scroll; written on it was the simple question: **'Why?'**

"Neo, please… don't-" The Scroll was waved in front of her again.

 **'** **Why?'**

"Mrs. Alistair, let Maggie explain in her own-"

 **'** **Why?'**

"Because you mean too much to me!" she shouted. The confession bounced off the walls, reverberating around the four of them in the room like waves of energy. "You _all_ mean so much to me." By this point she was in tears. "Mom and Dad are gone now, so I don't have anyone else. You all are the closest thing I have to a family now. You, Fox, Coco and Velvet, Yatsuhashi, little Clementine; all of you are my rock now. I would do anything for you, and if that means giving up my ability to have children, that's fine."

 **'** **But why Mags? What about you and having children of your own?  
'It's not like this process seems irreversible, can't we swap them back after we're done?'**

"If I may?" Doctor Otum asked, earning a small nod from Neo. "The process is reversible, sure, but doing so comes at a great risk to Miss Frio's life. Taking part of her out, giving it to someone else, then returning it back to her introduces more risks than I dare to mention; most notably, the fact that the uterus - whilst not being capable of 100% acclimation to the new body - would no longer be familiarised with the body of its original owner. As such, returning it to where it first came from would be the equivalent of taking a brand new uterus and putting it inside her, only with a significantly higher risk of infections. I would be unwilling to perform such a task."

 **'** **You know what this means, right Mags? If we do this and it doesn't work, neither of us can ever have children of our own.'** Reading what her friend had written, she sighed, lowering the Scroll in her hand.

"I know…"

 **'** **Then why are you doing this?! Why aren't you trying to find someone to settle down with, have your own family before trying to fix ours?'**

The Faunus finally turned fully to speak with her, holding both of her hands in her own. "Neo, I've tried for so long. Nothing came of anything I did, of anyone I saw. Duke was the only exception to that rule, and I finally thought that I could live a life with someone. Then he up and went, and reality came crashing down around me." With a soft smile, one that Neo often told her was as soft as her tail was, she elaborated by admitting, "life doesn't seem to want to give me a happy ending. You were probably the closest thing I was going to get, even looking back on those years I had with Duke it never felt as complete as we did. I've told you this before, but you had your life set out for you since you two first met. If letting my idea of a 'happily ever after' go means that you can have yours, I'd do it. I _will_ do it." Reflexively, she reached up with her left hand and stroked her cheek. "Please."

"Maggie, I…" he wanted to say something more in depth, but words seemed to be failing him at the moment, so Fox settled on giving her shoulder a slight squeeze and uttering "thank you." Showing her own gratitude towards the gesture, she leaned her head towards his hand, resting it on the back of his hand.

 **'** **I wish to go through with this, and I am happy for Maggie to be my uterus donor.'** Doctor Otum smiled sincerely at the acceptance.

"Marvellous. When did you want to have the operation done?"

"… She wants to know when the earliest slot you have for it is," the scarred Huntsman relayed on behalf of his wife.

"It would be in three days' time." Neo's eager grin at hearing that got a small laugh from the doctor. "I take it you are fond of the idea?" She nodded. "Good. Do you all live in Vale as Miss Frio does?"

"We do, but we're here for a mission; one we've just finished actually, so we're technically on wind down time."

"And are you and the rest of your team residing in Mistral for the time being?"

"We are."

"Excellent," he declared as he stood from his chair, "then let's not waste any more time in here, we must inform your team."

* * *

"Is that your child?" a random woman asked of Velvet as she sat opposite the Faunus in the waiting room, trying to make idle conversation to break up the vast silence that most people embraced and sat waiting for a doctor or nurse to see them. She was much older than any of the team present, and at least 100 times older than Clementine at eight and a half months old, going by her silver hair and wrinkled face.

"Yes she is. She's eight and a half months old."

"That's lovely dear. She's… um… _just_ like you, is she?" The question itself was cause for concern, but the way in which it was said raised more than just Velvet's eyebrows on the team; though the others stayed out of it (for now) they were keeping an eye on her to see how this conversation went.

"And what do you mean by 'Just like me'?"

"Well… a Faunus, dear. Or had you not noticed your ears?"

Velvet scoffed at that remark. "Of course I noticed. Even if I hadn't, I'm sure the bullies would have told me soon enough."

"A lovely young lady such as yourself being bullied? Whatever for?"

' _She's kidding, right?_ ' the Faunus thought to herself. But going off the expression the lady wore, she was being deadly serious. "For my heritage, even at Beacon, even as a Huntress. 'You don't belong here.' 'You are an abomination.' 'Why do I have this animal protecting me? I'd rather perish', that one sticks out with me." Each example the woman listed off brought forth a new wave of irritation.

"Sorry, I'm not too well versed in the here and now. Back when I was much younger, the Faunus were treated with such disrespect it was nauseating, even for a young girl like me who admittedly took part in it all. But you say you're a Huntress? That's lovely."

 _Annoyance._

' _Yeah, I feel the same way too Coco._ '

"How were you dealing with your pregnancy, what with being a Huntress? Did your husband stay with you?"

' _Oh, this'll be fun._ ' Coco thought the same thing too, having heard what was said and as a wave of _Playfulness_ flooded through Velvet via her Mark.

"Actually, I don't have a husband."

"Oh my, your consummated out of wedlock?!"

"In this day and age, who _hasn't?_ " The look of unease in the woman's eyes made this all the more worth it. "But no, I _am_ married, happily so. I'd like you to meet them actually. Say hello to my wife, Coco Scarlatina, formally Adel."

"Hi," Coco smiled, "I see you're getting along quite well with my husband here." Both Huntresses saw themselves as wife to one another, but in situations like this Coco, being the one who carried their child around inside her, was designated wife and Velvet by extension was designated husband.

The old woman sat there mystified, trying to piece it all together before saying anything. "I am happy for you," she finally managed, "but I am a little confused as to how you both had a child. You're both-"

"Very observant of you madam," Coco chastised without a single hint of sarcasm, despite the comment she made being laced with it, "yes, both of us are women, with the same body parts as any other woman. But there are things called sperm donors, and we used one to create our little girl. We also combined that with a little bit of science so that we could have a child that was as close to 100% genetically ours as it could possibly be given the circumstances. As it stands, I'll take the healthy 49.5% split with Velvet here, and we can thank our teammate, Yatsuhashi, here for that outlying 1%." The woman turned her attention to the man the former Adel gestured towards. As most people were, she was immediately intimidated by the hulk of a man based solely on appearance.

"Coco and I," Velvet stated very bluntly as she looked straight into the eyes of the woman sat opposite, "love each other with all our hearts. Enough to not only be married, but Mated too."

"Wha-"

"It's a Faunus thing," she butt in. "With our daughter here, our lives are complete. We love it this way and would quite like to continue on with it without the constant 20 Questions bombardment we get nearly every time we go out as a family." A doctor called out for a 'Mrs. Moss' and she looked off, clearly meant for her. With one final glance towards the couple, Coco waved at her whilst mouthing the word 'bye' as she headed out to do what she came here to do.

As the woman and the doctor that called her headed down the corridor, Fox, Neo, Maggie and the doctor they were seeing returned.

"You two look like you were having fun."

"Nah, just someone unsure of how modern society works. She seemed nice enough, just a little bit uneducated in those regards."

"She also used me as a means of intimidation again," Yatsuhashi offhandedly commented.

"I would do no such thing!"

"To be fair, you-"

"Don't you dare, Alistair!" Despite starting off with a stern look, Coco could never keep a straight face for long once she'd used the 'Don't you dare, Alistair' line; it was such a beautiful bit of coincidental rhyming that worked so well every time she used it, and she rarely used it on purpose.

"Before my wife decides to go off on one _again_ , how did everything go doctor?"

"Very well, thank you. How much do you know?"

"Only the reason they were coming here, nothing more."

"In that case; your friends and teammates came to a decision. The proposition was for Mrs. Alistair to undergo surgery to give her a healthy and working womb from somebody else so that she may give birth at some point in the semi-near future. After weighing it up, she has decided that she wishes to go through with the surgery…"

"That's great news Neo, we're so proud of-"

"…with Miss Frio here as the donor."

"-you… huh?" CVY all stared at Maggie, who seemed almost ashamed of what was said. "Maggie?"

"She deserves a happy ending after such a poor start. I just wanted to do that for her." Coco and Velvet looked between one another, then wordlessly crossed the distance and cocooned the Arctic Fox Faunus in a loving embrace.

"I'm sure she'd tell you this sooner or later, but you don't know what this means to her." The bushy tailed Faunus chuckled/sniffled a quiet "I think I do" into the taller of the two women's shoulder before they released the hug and thanked her from the bottom of their hearts.

"If we want to get the surgery done straight away, which in all honesty is the best way to do this, then we'll need to take the two of them away as soon as possible. When would be the best time to do that?"

"First thing tomorrow," Coco explained, "we've literally just come off a ten day mission around the Sirocco Region, so we're all sweaty and horrible in need of a decent night's sleep in a proper bed." The doctor let out a small laugh, a sign to the team leader that he wasn't a 'strictly business' kind of guy, but a much more down to earth one, and that already put her mind at ease.

"I understand, it's best that they come in here with clear heads anyway, and we don't exactly want to have them waiting in these beds for longer than necessary. All I ask is for them to be properly rested and to avoid sugary drinks and foods, then we may even get a chance to perform sooner if the surgery clears up. For now, I'll bid you farewell, and I will see you two back here again bright and early tomorrow." Doctor Otum offered a round of goodbyes to everyone before he turned around and returned down the corridor once more, the automatic doors halfway down shutting behind him.

"I like him," Coco mentioned once he was out of earshot.

"You're married to _me,_ " Velvet deadpanned back as she picked up Clementine's carrier.

With a smirk, the fashionista leaned in and pecked her wife on the cheek, muttering a simple "Yes I am" as she slipped her hand into Velvet's free one to head back to the Bullheads. Yatsuhashi followed close behind them, and Fox jogged up to be with him after Neo requested that she and Maggie had a little talk to themselves at the rear of them all.

 **'** **I still can't believe you're doing this for me. Thank you x'**

"Don't worry about it. You're my best friend, and the closest thing I'd ever consider as family since Mom and Dad. I would do anything to make you happy." Neo raised an eyebrow as a sly grin grew on her face. "Stop it." The mute mouthed the word 'What?', deliberately ignorant of what she had done to earn a response as she did. Maggie, in response and protest, simply started walking away.

The Faunus didn't get very far, as Neo ran up behind her and jumped on her back, clinging to her like a tri coloured limpet.

"Fox," she called, "your _older_ and supposedly _more mature_ wife has digressed; help."

"No can do, once she's like that she's stuck until she's bored. And she doesn't really get bored easily." Ensuring Coco and Velvet were well out of earshot, especially Velvet with her enhanced hearing, Maggie glared at the small woman grinning on her back, calling her a slew of unsavoury names as they all made their way back to the place they were staying.

* * *

Shorter chapter, but this needed its own space to breathe. And hey, at least it's not a Chapter 7 scenario, eh? Y'know, that 900 word chapter...

I _really_ need to go back and fix that chapter...

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	103. These Opposites are Attractive

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Yang like mornings. Heck, she _loved_ mornings. Anyone who looked at her whilst she was at Beacon - and she was fully aware, a _lot_ of people were looking at her at Beacon - would have seen a happy-go-lucky blonde with an amazing body and a love for going out clubbing, so immediately their thoughts on the subject matter would go "She loves to party, so she must hate mornings".

On the contrary, not only did Yang boast the fourth highest entry score in her year at Beacon and maintained a consistently positive grade record through all four years – particularly excelling in combat like her father before her, so she was told – Yang only went to clubs when she was wanting information on someone, and she was a morning person through and through. She chalked it up to those years that she was looking after Ruby almost on her own, waking up first to make sure she got up for school.

She detested it at first, but over time she saw just what a nice feeling could come of a pre-dawn rise. After the incident with the trolley and Grimm that Qrow saved them from, Yang used the mornings where she used to look for her mother Raven and instead started going for runs. Small ones at first, but eventually they grew longer and longer, and she grew faster and stronger as she went.

It was what truly started her out on her journey to be a Huntress, the second catalyst as it were, but the first of her own choosing. The initial one was of course hearing stories of Team STRQ and what the members did in their time before settling down, and her resolve to become just like her Uncle Qrow, her Dad and her Mom - both the one that birthed her and the one that raised her.

Even now that she was in her mid-twenties and no longer looking out for her little sister, she never broke that habit. But in all truth, she didn't like to think about why she liked mornings because it stemmed from sadness.

Now, compare her with Blake, and you have someone who is the polar opposite.

Blake was never one for mornings. If she could, and she has on more than one occasion back at Beacon, back in the White Fang, even as far back as at home with her parents, she would spend the night sitting in bed just reading a story (or two), her Faunus attributes helping her see in the darkness that she read in. It's where her love of books came from and to this day that love has never dwindled.

Books were Blake's means of escaping from the world in which she lived. When everything around her was going wrong in so many more ways than she dared to even count, stealing herself away with a hardback - and if she was so lucky, a cup of tea - and reading through the world that that the author had created; and in those moments, they seemed to be created just for her.

But it was because of those nights spent reading that her loathing of the morning came from. Morning rays meant that the night was over, and that she needed to reinsert herself into the drag that was real life. No longer was she an undead magician with no skin, no longer did she ride around on the back of dragons and slay all those who were set to betray her, no longer was she a master of stealth and passion (though her Mate would attest otherwise to that statement), she was just a Faunus in the real world. And that shift was never one Blake enjoyed. Morning's also meant no sleep, and sleeping was good.

Pair these two together and you'd think that they couldn't be more opposite; you'd be right too. An early bird and a night owl. Two sides of the same coin. The woman whose smile and hair glowed brighter than the Sun, and the woman who chose to seek the company of moonlight and shadows. The Yin and the literal Yang.

Now that the pair had Mated, they didn't completely balance out one another's love for the time of day, but they certainly helped make it easier. At times, Yang would remain awake long into the dead of night, following the story of the most recent book that her beautiful onyx haired partner bought for her (admittedly she needed a reading light), and even Blake could be up before Yang to make them something quick and full of energy before their run.

This time, they both managed to stir at roughly the same time just as the first rays were peeking over the horizon, neither light nor dark outside. It was the perfect start to their day, encapsulating their relationship to a T - the perfect balance between the light and the dark.

"Morning, my Sunshine," Blake groaned as she stretched herself, still staying in bed and flipping over to look at her partner as she woke up too.

"And good mornin' to you, Starlight."

"Ooh, _someone_ is happy to be awake this morning. Is it for any special occasion that I'm unaware of?"

 _Playful._ "Like I could ever hide anything from you babe."

"I'd say the same, but-"

 _Mischief._ "You hide it in the cabinet, in that special compartment that can only be opened with the key hidden in the main coffee table's own secret draw, the one that requires that little key on your pendant that you insisted was just a decorative piece." Blake's face went through the full spectrum of reds as Yang went through every little detail of her meticulously planned hiding spot for her special stash; currently, she was sporting a very prominent 'beetroot' colour.

"Bitch," she grumbled.

"Pussy," her Mate retorted. Blake groaned again, grabbing her pillow and smashing it over her own face, muffling her voice to near inaudibility.

"I walked right into that one…" she said. Yang deduced what Blake had said, even though she barely made any of the words out through the feathers in the pillow. Whilst the blonde giggled at how easy it was to rile her Mate up, she did love her through thick and thin.

"You did. But I mean no harm or disrespect when I say it; I still love you."

"I love you too Yang." By this point, the Faunus had removed the pillow from her face and was smiling back at her lilac eyed partner, so when she mentioned how much she loved her, she quite happily leaned up and initiated the kiss. "How did you figure it out?"

"Blake, it's very obvious when you have a terrible day; seeing you come in all mentally beaten breaks me, and when you tell me to leave you alone is like grinding the broken pieces into a fine dust. You wander around the house looking grumpy, you've even tried attacking me on a couple of occasions."

"I haven't!... Have I?"

"Nah, I'm just teasing." The bookworm huffed, but the brawler only hugged her closer. "You did certainly _look_ like you would though, so… Anyway, you wander around with your pendant, then once you've gotten to the table you shoot upstairs and I don't see you for a few minutes. Then all of a sudden you spray me, then I'm the most interesting thing in the world."

"I'm sorry Yang… I just-"

"Need to take the edge off, I agree. I don't really condone what you do, y'know - catnip just brings out the animal side in you, and that's not who I fell in love with."

"When you fell in love with me," she pointed out, "and when we became Mates, you fell in love with and Mated _all_ of me, even this side."

"I did," she sighed. "I just wish we could talk it out instead of you using that spray on me."

"I can't promise I won't do it."

"Okay, then promise me something else then."

The cat smirked. "Name your terms."

"From now on, _I_ have the pendant key." The smirk vanished instantly from the Faunus face, swapping onto the blonde's face instead.

"Why would I agree to that? What if you're not around?"

"I guess you'll have to suffer in silence, or; Talk. It. Out." With each of those last words, she leaned in and planted a quick kiss on her Mate's lips, the final one being held for a little longer to really nail home her point.

"Will that make you happier if I did that?"

"Blake, not only do I need, like, three separate showers to rid myself of the smell, but do you know what catnip does to my hair if I don't?"

"No…" she admitted, sounding slightly worried at the fact. Yang's hair may be the one and only thing on Remnant that could threaten Blake's position as "Person or Thing Loved Most by Yang Xiao Long", so if something bad happened to it, at least a city block would know. Yang shifted herself to a more comfortable sitting position.

"Okay, the first time you used that stuff on me, d'you remember that?"

"How could I forget? It was the night I ran into Ilia again after all these years."

"Yeah, well after your whole clingy bit and we dozed off with you feeling secure, I went to shower the next morning and my hair was lime green in places." Amber eyes widened in fear; she messed up Yang's hair and she'd never said anything about it before. "I was livid beyond almost all comprehension, you messed up my hair Blakey. I couldn't get my red eyes away; I was permanently angry. Most people find themselves in a hospital if they try to even touch my hair." The onyx haired woman shrunk back slightly, wanting to speak but not wanting to reignite that fire. "But d'you know what happened?" A frightened head shake was the only answer Yang got. "I came back into the room, ready to scream and shout at you for ruining my hair, and I saw you lying there with the most peaceful smile on your face. I remembered why you came in and did whatever you did, I wasn't sure what it was at the time, and I recalled how bad you were the night before. It wasn't a malicious action, just a selfish one that had an unintended side effect." The bookworm tried to shy away, but Yang cupped her chin gently and turned her head back, though she still refused to lock eyes with her.

"Blake?" Feeling her partner staring at her, the Faunus let her eyes wander back, locking on to the pools of lilac she'd grown to adore as much as the woman attached to them. "You are one of four people I have _ever_ let touch my hair - Summer, Dad and Ruby are one through three on that list. I realised that you meant no harm, so I shouldn't cause you any harm. I simply washed my hair over and over until I got it all out, then vowed to never let this stuff sit in there ever again.

"So what I'm saying is yeah, I'd make me happier." The Faunus offered a weak smile.

"Okay, I can do that."

"Good, 'cause I already swiped the pendant." For proof, she grabbed the silver chain off her bedside table and held it so her Mate could see.

"Of course you did," she replied, not even trying to take it back from her and flopping back down onto her pillow.

"Hey, no frowny faces missy! Tell ya what, I'll make it up to you today."

"Why?" she inquired, her feline ears perking up slightly and their mark glowing as Yang felt a wave of _Curiosity_ and _Contentment,_ even though her face was trying to remain neutral.

"Well, 'cause I scared you. I probably made you feel like I was going to hurt you or something, so I'm gonna make it up to you today."

"Really? How so?" she teased, wanting to see where this would go.

"Well…"

 ** _*bzzzt*_**

 ** _*bzzzt*_**

 ** _*bzzzt*_**

Both women gazed back to the set of drawers on the far side of the room and saw Yang's Scroll screen lighting up. "Motherfucker…" she cursed.

"You said your Dad was never up this early," Blake quipped.

"… Good one, Belladonna."

"I learnt from the best." Yang grinned as she reluctantly removed herself from the warmth that was her bed sheets, walking over to her Scroll. Blake found herself staring _again;_ she'd lived with and been in a relationship with Yang for long enough now to be intimately equated with every nook and cranny of the woman's body, but the sight of her partner walking away in her short pyjama shorts always made her cheeks flush.

The blonde had to admit, seeing the image of her sister on the screen was not something she was expecting. She walked over to the bed again with her trademark grin, starting the call on her way.

"Well good morrow to you, dear _schwester_. I never would have thought I'd see you up this early."

* _Yang, please don't butcher my native tongue,_ * came a voice from behind the brunette on screen.

"Ah, _meine schwägerin!_ How are you?"

* _…Okay, how do you know what 'sister-in-law' even is in Atlesian?_ *

"Yoo-hoo," came Blake's voice. Yang plonked herself back on the bed next to her Mate so that they could both be seen.

* _How could I forget? Thanks Blake. I swear, you two pick up more and more of each other's traits as the days go on._ *

"What, is the prospect of two Blake's terrifying for you, Miss Schnee?"

* _No,_ _ **that's**_ _fine. I could live with that. What I can't, and outright refuse to live with, is two of_ _ **you**_ _._ *

"Please, I'm great! Aren't I Rubbles?"

* _Just once,_ * their leader groaned, * _I'd like to be able to call Yang or Blake without you two bickering for hours on end. Is that too much to ask?_ * The older of the two in each of the couples promptly remained quiet once their leader had expressed a distaste of their argument. * _Thank you._ *

"Thank _you,_ " Blake parroted back, "I feel the same way a lot of the time, but only you really have the authority to shut them both up."

* _You say that, but Yang's told me aaaall about your little games,_ _ **"Frau Nachtschatten"**_ _._ * Being engaged (and less than two weeks away from actually being married) to Weiss, Ruby felt it was both appropriate and proper to dedicate some time learning the Atlesian language, seeing as how it was Weiss' native language even though she used it so sparingly you'd be mistaken for thinking that she didn't know a word of it.

In the final term of their Third Year at Beacon and for the first month or two of their Fourth Year, the caped leader was learning very basic Atlesian in her spare time and in secret. When the time came to advance to more complicated vocabulary and phrasings, and becoming conversational in general, she asked Weiss in person, and in Atlesian. Ruby had rarely seen Weiss cry, and she seldom saw her tear up in joy, so bringing her then-girlfriend to tears over something that seemed so trivial was equal parts amazing and worrying. Weiss ensured her that there was no need to be worried, she did everything perfectly.

Being the prodigy she was - she had to have been to not only get into Beacon two years earlier, but to also lead her own team through the hardships of their time there and out the other end as A Tier material - picking up the language to a conversational level came almost as second nature. By the time Fox and Neo, and by extension Coco and Velvet, got married in the Spring she was completely fluent in it, save the odd blip here and there.

And, being fluent, it meant she could tease her sister and her Mate no end in Atlesian, especially when they both did the same thing eventually and learnt the language.

The feline Faunus glared at her partner next to her, understanding fully what the crimsonette on the other line had just said and the meaning behind the name, but said nothing about it. If she was being completely honest, the silence worried Yang the most about it all - surprisingly, the fact that their roleplay name had come back full circle was not the biggest worry for her.

"Mind explaining why you called?" Blake asked abruptly, bringing the conversation far away from anything to do with anything related to them. "I _was_ enjoying sleep and my personal space heater."

* _Oh yeah, sorry,_ * the leader apologised. * _Neo just posted something; you should take a read before I explain further._ *

"No offense sis, but couldn't this have waited until later?"

* _Yang, we all know that there's a time difference between where we are right now and where you are; this was the best we could do. Besides, it's inconvenient for us as well, it's already nearly midnight here and_ _ **someone**_ _has got to get their dress sorted tomorrow. Not that I know that, of course._ * Weiss commented, giving Ruby a brief side-eye at the last comment, earning the snow haired woman a small smack on the shoulder.

* _I have it under control._ *

"Sure Rubes. So, you want us to read what Neo's uploaded."

* _Uh huh._ *

"Question: why?"

* _Just read it, please._ *

"Why, are you two in need of a bedtime story?"

* _Don't you get involved in this Blake!_ * Weiss snapped back, almost playfully. The Faunus rolled her eyes, then pulled up the post Ruby was talking about.

"'Posted 4 hours ago', is that the one?"

* _Yup. Give it a read._ * Blake handed the Scroll over to Yang, who was much more adept at reading things off and making them sound interesting than she was; Blake was aware that her semi-monotonous voice could make anything sound dull, even the greatest poetry in the world.

 _~ Orchid Alistair (_ _ **_neopolitan**_ _) uploaded 1 photo 4 hours ago_

 _'_ _I know I don't post a lot on here, but I feel that this is a milestone in my life that is worth documenting and sharing around, so feel free to do so._

 _My best friend, Magnolia Frio (_ _ **mafriolia-1**_ _), has given me possibly the greatest gift I could ever have asked for. She donated her uterus so that I can have children, a feat I never knew I couldn't do naturally until much further down the line._ ~

"Holy shit…" Yang muttered reflexively.

* _Keep reading._ * And so, she did.

~ _When I was a child, I contracted heterochromia borealis, commonly Differing Aura Glow Syndrome or 'DAG Syndrome'. It's not a fatal disease in any way, shape or form, but it can be a debilitating one, especially as a Huntress. In the simplest of terms, it causes a person's Aura to go wild, swapping through various different colours which, while looking pretty, can actually weaken the Aura over time._

 _I had a very advanced strain of DAG Syndrome, so much so it affected by physical appearance as well as my Aura. My parents and uncle caught it early and kept it in check with medicine. But the medicine reacted negatively with my particular Aura, causing it to go haywire and destroying my vocal cords. At least I thought it was only my vocal cords._

 _Only recently did I and doctors discover that when the DAG reacted negatively to me did it not only take away my ability to speak, but also my ability to have children, completely destroying my uterus._

 _I was heartbroken, and I had resigned myself to knowing that I would never be a Mom, at least not of my own biological children._

 _But Maggie went above and beyond the call of duty as a friend. She knew the pain I was going through was tearing me up, and she took action. She told Fox (_ _ **ali_stare_f**_ _) and I that she found a way to transplant someone's healthy uterus into me so that I could have children, and that she was volunteering to be the donor._

 _I was lost for words (figuratively) and still am._

 _This is myself and Maggie in our beds side by side after the operation. She is my best friend, and I will forever have proof of that when I have kids. We're both at home now, safe and sound._

 _Love you Mags, always xxx'_

 _2,975 people like this post, including_ _,_ _ **adelnomore**_ _,_ _ **.roses**_ _and 130 others you know_

 _1,538 people have shared this post around_ ~

"Wow…" the yellow and black pair uttered in harmony.

* _You're telling me,_ * Weiss said, cuddling up to her fiancée and sounding almost frightened, * _she was treated at the Atlas Hospital. Imagine what may have happened if she went anywhere else, or she didn't go at all. It's scary to think someone we've grown fond of couldn't be here if not for something so small._ *

"You're telling me…" Yang commented, stealing a quick glance at her Mate beside her.

* _What I was thinking was we could see if we can give them a surprise visit at some point, maybe even before the wedding. Both of them did something amazingly brave, Maggie for doing what she did and Neo for sharing the story; I think they deserve something. What do you guys think?_ *

"I think you're onto something Rubes," Blake mentioned. "When are you likely to be down in Vale again?"

* _Well, Ruby has still got her dress to get sorted tomorrow, so that rules then out. And we've got people coming around to do last minute things with us the day after. So I'd say we'll be available to come down in three days._ *

"Sweet. Well, don't go tiring yourselves out, and we'll see you both in three days. Come straight here and let yourselves in, we'll all shoot off together."

"See you both later!"

* _Bye Yang, bye Blake!_ * The call ended.

"So." Yang tensed up, nothing good ever came of Blake starting their conversations with 'So', especially when that was the only word she used. "You told your sister about what we do with ourselves?"

"To be fair, it… kinda slipped out one day. I didn't plan to-"

"Really? Because it sounded to me like she said that she knew 'aaaall about our little games' going so far as to say 'Mrs. Nightshade' in _Atlesian,_ a name that has no meaning outside of the bedroom in relation to us." The brawler, trying as desperately as she could to flee, felt that she had been cornered by a very big and powerful creature that she stood no hope defeating. "That sounds pretty in depth to me."

"I'm sorry Blakey."

"That's alright."

"Huh?"

"I said, that's al-"

"I heard what you said, but it confused me."

"I accept your apology…" Yang raised an eyebrow, hearing the end of that trail off and leading to something else. "… because I know how you're going to make it up to me."

"You do?" The onyx haired woman rolled over on top of her Mate, asserting her dominance in the situation. "I mean yes, you do."

"Better. You're going to do what you were planning before, then afterwards we're going to the store. We'll buy one _small_ bottle of catnip spray for me to put back in the hidden cupboard…"

"Blake, tha-"

"Ab-bab-bab, you're making it up to me, remember?" Yang's affirmative grumble was all she needed to continue. "We get one small bottle of spray, then we come home and just relax."

"Really? _That's_ your proposition? Get another spray bottle, then sit back and do nothing?"

"Yup. And do you want to know why?" She didn't offer any words, only a raised eyebrow at the question. "Because I know how much you dislike doing nothing all day. So that's what we're going to do."

"But Blaaake!" the brawler whined. Before she got to protest any further, she was silenced by a single finger to her lips.

"Who knows, if you're good, I might see if we can get someone in to see you; I think they may have left something in a drawer for you."

A smirk crept its way onto the lilac eyed woman's face, one that grew larger and larger until it became a full on beam of a smile. "Whatever you say, my Starlight."

* * *

Unexpected Bumbleby chapter is unexpected!

I remember wanting to do something a little different with the reveal of what had happened here - I love Bumbleby and felt (and still feel) very comfortable with writing them, so it made sense to me that, if I was going to do a chapter from another perspective, it'd be from theirs.

The end of Senseless is coming up. I'd appreciate a comment just saying what you've loved about the story

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	104. A Willing Hostage (Honest)

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

It had been a few days since Doctor Otum allowed Neo and Maggie out of the hospital and back home. Coco, Velvet and Yatsuhashi all headed back to Vale right after the two of them were admitted to the hospital, taking Clementine with them. Fox on the other hand stayed in Mistral to look after them once they had been through with their operation and were eventually released from the hospital's care.

The three of them made the journey back to Vale together. Maggie drove them from the airport back to their house, the couple sitting in the back seat in a comfortable silence.

At least, that's what she thought.

In truth, the pair of them were scheming for a large portion of the journey home - a feat that was very feasible when you could speak directly into one another's minds and with no physical sign that you are doing so.

When they pulled up in the driveway, Fox got out of one side first and Neo got out of the other. Once out onto their driveway, Neo 'fell' and Fox was straight to her aid. He tried getting her up, but couldn't manage to keep her steady.

"Maggie, think you could help me out here?" he asked, trying to steady her but 'failing' to do so. The Faunus complied, going around the car to get to her. Once there, the pair took Neo inside, Fox getting the keys and letting them in. Velvet took over from Maggie, taking her into the front room.

"If you don't need me," she called into the house, "then I'll be heading…" When she turned around and was greeted by the sight of Neo shutting the door, she had to admit that she jumped a little bit. "What? But, you were… I… what?" Neo smirked, shaking her head at her friend's slow speed at realising what was happening.

"Sorry Maggie," Fox said from behind her, "but Neo wanted you to stay here for a couple of days. You've done so much for her recently, she wants to look after you back."

"That's nice and all Neo, but I need to shoot. Besides, my keys are in the car and I… okay, when and how did you get those?" she asked, pointing to the set of keys in Neo's hand, specifically _her_ car keys. She knew they were hers because of the ARMA figurine on the keychain.

"Perks of being a teleporter," Coco pointed out as she stuck her head around the corner, currently breastfeeding the now 6 month old Clementine.

"Ha ha, very funny Neo. Give them back." The illusionist's response? Stuff the keys down into her bra. "Okay, you know how empty that notion is - I will quite willingly stick my hand down there and retrieve that back." With a swap of her iris colours - pink to brown and vice versa - and a smirk, Neo promptly locked the door, removed her key and then teleported away, making sure to leave a shattering image of herself behind.

"Just so you know, that's her way of saying, 'you're not leaving'," the breastfeeding mother mentioned.

"I gathered that much."

That leads us to where Team CFVYN, Maggie and baby Clementine all are now, three days later. The Arctic Fox Faunus accepted her fate and acknowledged that she will be staying with them for the next few days as Neo's way of saying 'thank you' for what she'd done for her. She did however wish to go home _temporarily_ \- she couldn't get over the fact she had to say that repeatedly in front of Neo to get her to realise that she will be coming back - to change clothes and to get some things for her to wear over the next few days.

Once again Neo insisted that, as part of her thank you, she would go to the flat and get Maggie's things for her. As generous as the offer was, the creamy haired woman had to decline because she needed to not only get some personal things for her, but also she didn't trust Neo to not bring back any lingerie for her, despite the fact there'd be literally zero need to wear it.

As Maggie got into her car to do that, she received a message from Fox.

 **F - 'DELETE WHEN YOU HAVE READ! Neo just mentioned how you were right; she was going to bring some of your lingerie back from the flat. I really don't want to know how she knows where to find it.'** The Faunus blushed fully, letting it come to a full glow on her face with no one around to hide it from, and promptly deleted the message as instructed before taking off back home.

She'd been staying with the rest of Team CFVYN for the past three days now. Neo _wanted_ to wait on her hand-and-foot, she even bought a maid outfit and everything.

"Why… did you buy a maid outfit Neo?" Yatsuhashi asked as he walked in on her finishing changing into it. "Especially…" Try as he might, and despite the fact that he felt no such attraction, he was still a man and he couldn't help but sneak the tiniest of glimpses down to the ridiculously short skirt and low cut blouse she wore "one that is so revealing…"

" _I bought it to be Mags' maid for the next few days. Also, because I look fucking sexy in this, and I want her to know it._ "

"You're married," he replied, mentally rolling his eyes at her nature even this deep into her relationship and marriage, "and as much as I know you love the person, not the gender, Fox is very much in love with you, and you alone. Don't make him feel unwanted. Also, you need to watch your language, even if it's Sign. Clementine doesn't need to have such a colourful vocabulary this early in life." She didn't like it, but she complied and took the outfit off. Though she did put it away near the top of her outfit drawer with the hope that perhaps she may get to use it later on with her husband.

Despite the joke she was willing to have with the outfit, she didn't wait on Maggie hand and foot. Really, she just wanted to make sure she had people she could talk to and be around, people she could just relax with and not have to deal with anything untoward for a few days, and the Arctic Fox was thankful for it.

What made them all turn their heads though was the knock on the door at around three in the afternoon on the day Maggie insisted she needed to go home and start getting back into work again.

"None of you ordered anything, right?" Coco asked out of curiosity. When the answer was a collective "no", she hopped up and made her way to the door, placing her handbag behind it so that it was in easy reach should anything happen.

"Hey Coco!" came Ruby's cheery voice from their porch.

"Ruby? What are you doing here?" Coco looked up and saw the rest of the team standing behind her. "More importantly, what are _you_ doing here? Haven't you got a wedding back in Atlas in a week's time?"

"We do, it's hard to forget my own wedding date." Weiss stood up straight as she continued on. "But I've made sure that everything was planned and prepared in advance, so as of now, we're free until the big day."

"And when we saw what Neo posted, we wanted to come around as a team and wish her the best."

"That's sweet of you guys. Come in." The team complied, taking their boots and heels off at the door. "Maggie's here too, so it's going to be a little bit cramped in here," the fashionista warned.

"Cool, two birds with one stone," Yang remarked.

"Guess who came to visit?" Coco teased as Weiss made her way into the main room of the house, followed by Blake, then Yang and finally, after removing her puzzle box of a boot, Ruby.

" _Well, this is unexpected, but not unpleasant._ "

"Hey Neo," Yang greeted, extending her arms out for the smaller yet older woman to jump into, which she did.

"What's brought you all around here? I thought you two," Fox pointed between Ruby and Weiss, "would still be back in Atlas getting everything sorted for next week."

"Nah, Weiss has been, like, _super_ organised with the whole thing. Everything's done except getting the food for everyone, which we're collecting the day before, and doing the actual thing."

The scarred man chuckled. "I wouldn't have expected anything less from you, Schnee."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?" He held his hands up with a grin, clearly not wanting to get into a quarrel he knew he'd lose, then shifted himself where he sat so that he was a little closer to Neo and giving a bit more room for everyone else to sit down too.

"Still didn't answer the question though."

"Sorry. Well, Ruby called us up a couple of morning's back to show us your post Neo." The heterochromatic woman turned fully to face the Cat Faunus speaking. "We read it, and she suggested we came down to see you together in Vale to both congratulate you and wish you the best of luck." Her attention turned to the Arctic Fox sat beside her. "And we got lucky, considering you're here too Maggie. We were going to try and find where you lived to come and say thank you and congratulations as well."

"Why would I need thanking? I didn't do anything big."

"Bullsh-" Yang was smacked on an arm by both Blake and Weiss from either side before she got to finish the word. "Ow…" Her future sister-in-law pointed to the playpen over behind where Velvet was, spotting the baby Rabbit Faunus playing in there. As she was right now, Clementine had her Faunus appendages fully developed now, so much so that she looked near enough like a Chibi clone of her Faunus mother with the facial structure of her birth Mom and thin mousy brown hair starting to grow on her head. "Grr, I keep forgetting… sorry."

"What Yang was trying to say, I believe, was that she thinks you did do something pretty big. Donating part of your body after you've died is one thing, but doing the same whilst you're still alive takes a lot more courage and forward thinking than most people assume. It shows how much you care." Pink dusted the Arctic Fox's cheeks, and her tail wrapped around her body - a tick she always had whenever she was embarrassed.

" _Such a way with words Blake,_ " Neo signed, " _you should write a book._ "

"Yeah, yeah, she gets that a lot," Yang mentioned, passing off the comment. "Sure, vast majority of the time it's coming from me, but she still gets it a lot."

"Besides, I don't think I could do that again. The book was an experience to write, sure. But it took so much time and effort to do it. And it was completely factual, taking knowledge that already existed and transcribing it into written form."

"And a few pictures," Velvet added.

"Of course, how could we forget your involvement Velvet? Yes, a few pictures too. Writing that was more of us being… well, us, trying to educate everyone on using Sign Language in a practical manner, all in an effort to not alienate you. Trying to write something completely original is a feat that takes far too much planning for me to handle."

"Aren't you four taking a year away from being Huntresses, mostly in preparation for a certain candy cane coloured couple's wedding? Why can't you write now?" the caramel haired leader asked of the younger team.

"We've not taken it off completely, we're going sparse on the missions to keep money coming in, but for the most part we're sussing out what we want to do as both couples and as a team," the red leader replied. "A lot's come of it, so we've been using the large amounts of spare time well."

"Yeah; Blake and I bought our own place, and we decided that we were willing to go to the third stage of our Mate's Marks. We're not getting married though, so no need to worry about us changing surnames or double-barrelling them. I mean, 'Belladonna-Xiao Long' or 'Xiao Long-Belladonna' is a mouthful no matter which way we cut it. Plus, we've decided that neither of us want to carry a kid in us for 9 months, so we are going to adopt in a year or so."

"And me and Weiss have be-"

"Weiss and I…" the alabaster haired woman reminded.

"Yeah, yeah. _Weiss and I_ have gotten engaged and are getting married in eleven days. The time hasn't been wasted. Even though we haven't done a lot in this year, having it almost completely free of Huntsman related business has let us relax and enjoy a peaceful life. Oum only knows that when we're back in it's gonna be anything but peaceful." Velvet stared at the crimson reaper as she said that, relating to that train of thought and thinking about how she too wanted a life like what they were describing.

"But look at you five; your lives aren't going to be peaceful at all!"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" the Rabbit shot back at Yang, copying how Weiss spoke earlier almost beat for beat thanks to her Semblance of mimicry, though used in a far less battle appropriate scenario here.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, but…" the blonde indicated over to the side of everyone, right towards where Clementine was happily cooing to herself. "Once she gets lungs on her, she's gonna be a feisty one."

"Come on, spill Xiao Long. How would you know if our little Clemmy is going to be a crier?" The lilac eyed brawler glanced over at her silver eyed sister, her eyes lacking their usual warmth and fading into a somewhat duller and colder shade as she remembered what she had to go through as a child.

"Personal experience. And I am _not,_ " on the word, she turned her head back to Coco, her eyes now burning with a red fire, "going to explain it." They swapped back the minute Coco registered that she'd hit upon a sensitive subject and redirected questions to anyone but Yang.

 _Reassurance._

She looked over at her Mate, staring into pools of amber and smiling. "It'll be okay Yang. Just… give it time. You may tell them eventually, you may not. I'll support your decision, no matter what." The brawler nodded, leaning and giving her Mate a quick kiss on the forehead as a thanks for keeping her sane.

"Yo-"

"If you say, 'You were a poet, you just didn't know it', no amount of love for you is going to stop me from hitting you in the gut." Yang promptly held her tongue, wishing not to be on the receiving end of one of Blake's punches. They had grown considerably in strength since the beginning of their time as Mates, even in their time as partners, thanks in no small part to the Mark on one another's shoulder, but also training with one another for six and a half years.

"Anyway," the Rabbit eared Faunus said, "we knew what we were getting into with Clementine, especially with these things," she wiggled her animal appendages for emphasis. "No need to worry though, a certain someone may have had a talk with their father and managed to secure a patent for both noise muffling and noise cancelling, Faunus-friendly earmuffs."

"Really?!" the other two Faunus in the room blurted out in synchronised amazement even though this revelation only affected one of them physically.

"Yup!" the gunner declared, "Dad's been working on the first designs for the noise muffling ones we drew up for some time now, and they're ready to be made, with the second round making their way through the planning stages - noise cancelling things are surprisingly hard to make. I made it quite clear that the designs have to include something for everyone that needs them, from large eared Faunus right down to small eared ones. So, no need to hear your beloved snoring the night away anymore Blake."

"Hey!" Coco couldn't help but laugh at the joke at Yang's expense, even if no one else did.

"Perks of having a foot in a world of power, ain't that right Schnee?"

"I refuse to comment on that," said Schnee shot back folding her arms and looking away.

" _Well, she didn't deny it._ " A few of the others started chuckling at Neo's remark, with Weiss herself remaining blissfully unaware of what was said due to it being communicated in Sign Language, and you can't understand Sign Language if you aren't looking at it.

On cue, Clementine gargled in her little play area behind them all, understanding the laughing of the adults around her and trying to replicate it as best as she could. Velvet leaped over people to get to the pen, much to the sheer shock of some people there.

"What are you saying Clemmy? What're you trying to say?"

"Ah- aaah- aaahhnaa naa."

"Aww, you'll get there soon, my little bun-bun~" Ruby looked at the scene playing out, her smile sweet as she watched the Faunus she remembered being picked on by Cardin and his cronies back at Beacon because of her race now sat there and playing with her child, trying to coax something out of her that could be understood as words.

"Well, as nice as it is seeing you all again, we'd better bounce," Yang mentioned as an attempt to pry her own eyes away from the scene playing out. "I know that a certain sister of mine would like to visit some places before she returns to her palace up in the snowy North."

"You have a _palace?!_ " came Maggie's cry of disbelief.

"No, we do not. Yang seems to think so, but it is nothing of the sort."

"Yours and Ruby's bedroom is bigger than this area in here," the golden blonde commented, pointing her finger around her at the room.

"Okay, the master bedroom used to be bigger than this space, I'll give you that. But we both did some redecorating and building on that room, and made it so that all we needed managed to fit in there, including an en suite and a wardrobe. The rest of the rooms were repurposed into something similar. We made practical use of the vast quantities of space we had left."

"And Weiss didn't hurt herself once."

"Oh please; unlike my brother, I actually _can_ perform manual labour to a decent standard - it came with the desire to live away from his grasp."

"Alright, out of my house," Coco ushered, getting the soon-to-be wedded couple and their teammates up off the seats, "no marital squabbling in here." A few members of CFVYN wished them goodbye in the main room, Maggie also included in that, whilst Coco and Neo saw them to the door.

"See you later, little fighter," Yang bid to Neo, slowly and gently hitting her face as they always did once they'd left each other's company ever since Beacon, harkening back to their first ever encounter.

"See you guys soon. You did RSVP, right?" Neo nodded on behalf of everyone, Maggie not included. Weiss and Ruby were friends with her, but they didn't feel like they were close enough to invite her to their wedding. They hoped that the Arctic Fox Faunus didn't mind, and from what she'd said to them before, she didn't mind at all. "Cool. Bye!"

"I'd better go as well," came Maggie's voice from behind the two members of CFVYN at the door. Neo turned around looking a little disheartened, but she gave her reasons before the illusionist had a chance to express her opinion on the matter. "I've really enjoyed it here over the past couple of days, and I'm grateful for the fact I felt like I was a lodger here."

"You never are Maggie; you should know that."

"I know… doesn't stop me thinking it. But anyway, I have my own life to get back to. And unlike a certain super-team I just so happen to be good friends with, there's only one person paying the bills for my flat, so-"

"We understand. Get home, get some rest, get away from this crazy one," she pointed to her side with her thumb, a gesture the smallest of the three women didn't much appreciate, "and we'll see you soon."

"Yeah. Goodbye Neo," she said, hugging the smaller woman.

 **'** **I'm going to miss you.'**

"Okay, you know where I live and are the only person who really visits on a regular semi-basis that isn't my landlord, you can't possibly miss me."

 **'** **You don't know me :')'** The Faunus giggled at that, then gave Neo one last squeeze of their hug before heading upstairs to collect her belongings.

* * *

A much slower chapter again, but I feel it's needed - without it, everything seems to fast. Life is not something that zooms by, you've got to take each moment, each snippet of life, as is. And I just waxed philosophical at y'all, I am so sorry.

But whilst I'm doing this, go give my close friend **ClementineDavidson** some love. She's just uploaded the final chapter to her ongoing story " **The Truth and What Matters More** " - co-written by yours truly - so go and support her.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	105. Something I Hope Not to See Everyday

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

 **N - 'I hate this Coco...'  
'I want to curl up in a ball and die'**

"Hey! No dying on me."

 **N - 'I know, I'm so young and full of life.'**

"Hate to break it to you, but '33' isn't young anymore." She took a quick glance towards Clementine, who was sat in her stroller unaware of what either of the two people walking behind her were doing, so Neo responded to the comment by flipping the bird at the other adult standing beside her. "Psh, fine. Have it your way, I was trying to be nice to you."

 **N - 'How do you all manage with this?!'**

"Well, _we've_ had this problem all of our teenage and early adult lives, so we know when it's coming and what to do. You, on the other hand, are experiencing the third menstrual cycle of your whole life at 33 years old. Your body's bound to throw a hissy fit at that, it's a new experience for it, and it is not happy."

' _Yeah, no fucking kidding…_ ' the tri coloured woman thought to herself, glad that she could still shout and curse in her head without having to worry about Clementine picking any bad habits up. Her mother, on the other hand, didn't have that luxury. She'd toned down the cussing a fair amount since her child had been around.

"Besides, we've not got a lot of waiting time left. Just a few more minutes and you can see Doctor Otum, he can give you the all clear and you can be on your way to giving my baby girl a cousin."

 **N - 'If that's all you care about, then you can go to the deepest pits of Hell.'** Coco shrugged, neither admitting nor denying her intentions.

"I'm not going to deny it's bad, you'd rather type up a response over signing it to me." The mute groaned silently.

"Mrs. Alistair?" came the call a few minutes later.

' _Fucking finally…_ ' Neo stood up and made her way over towards Doctor Otum looking - in her opinion - far less presentable than she did last time, and that was with the fact she was in a rough state having been beating Grimm and travelling across Mistral for the past ten days back then in near enough the same clothes. Now, she was dressed in a loose fitting gunmetal grey t-shirt, a deep green zip-up hoodie and some jogging bottoms that weren't too tight around her waist or crotch area that she put on fresh this morning. She'd be fine wearing something like that around the house, but not to go out in.

"Nice to see you back, Mrs. Alistair. How are you feeling?"

 **'** **Honestly, I feel like shit'**

"Well, that is to be expected. I take it the menstrual cycle is going through its normal course then?" She nodded. "There have been no ill side effects or problems that have arisen that I should be made aware of?" This time she shook her head. She wasn't exactly going to tell him that she'd ruined on of her favourite pairs of panties when the first one came along. Velvet told her that it happens to most girls the first few times until they understand when it's going to happen to them, so ever since she tried to avoid wearing her nice underwear every four weeks until the whole thing was over. "And what about the immunosuppressants, nothing bad happened when you've been taking them?"

 **'** **Felt a little weak and woozy for the first few days, but you said that was to be expected.'**

"Yes, the drugs are there to stop your body from fighting the transplanted part, and as such can make you feel much weaker as a result. So if that was the only thing that was of any major concern to you, then I can officially say that the transplant has been successfully accepted by your body and that you may begin trying for children as of now." She thanked him silently, beaming as she did. "It was my pleasure. Now, go tell your teammate the good news. I'll update the medical records for you so that anywhere knows that, when the time comes for birthing, you are to receive a caesarean. It's for your own and the child's safety." She nodded once again, then went back to the main lobby where Coco and Clementine were waiting.

"Wow, that was quick. How'd it go?" The woman just smiled, giving her team leader a thumbs up. "Fantastic news!" The beret toting leader leaned down and looked right at her daughter, the child's hair coming through much thicker and looking like a proper head of hair now. "Did you see Clemmy? Auntie Neo can have children now." She smiled and cooed at that, not understanding exactly what was said, but interpreting it as good if her Mama was happy.

"Mama!"

"That's right Clemmy, it's Mama. And who's that over there?"

"Ni!"

"Good girl, it's Auntie 'Ni'." The gunner gushed at her daughter's growing understanding of the world around her. "Oh, I'm not ready to let her grow up just yet…" She fussed over her some more, tickling her tummy and bringing a heap of laughs from the child, now just under ten months old. She'd already said her first word, that word being "Mama". When Coco and Velvet came back from a midday date out and the baby Faunus saw them, she smiled and almost casually gargled out a distinctive "Mama" to the pair. Both of them froze when she did that, rushing to their child's side and scooping her up, showering her with love and affection as tears of unadulterated joy cascaded from their eyes.

Neo, who had been on main babysitting duty that day, did admit to the parents that this wasn't the first time she'd ever spoken. The child did speak a couple of times earlier that day, but in here defence both times were also "Mama", and at least this time she had a video of Mommy and Mama bawling at the fact they heard their little baby speaking.

 **N - 'Alright, time to go Coco'**

"Yeah. We've got to make sure our team haven't killed themselves without our presence." Neo shot the leader a quizzical look.

" _You trained Velvet up to lead in your absence, Fox has picked up a few hints and tricks, and Yatsuhashi can lead anyway but prefers to follow - they are going to be fine._ "

"Going back to Sign, are we?" the caramel haired woman teased.

" _I'm trying, alright? My stomach still hurts, but at least I don't have to worry about anything going wrong anymore, so I can focus a bit more to Sign._ "

"See I just thought you were sending me messages because you were being lazy."

" _How is that lazy? If anything, it's more effort to type up what I wanted to say. No, I sent you messages because you'll notice your Scroll going off; you won't always notice me waving my arms around in an attempt to talk to you._ "

"I suppose so." The pair left the hospital in much greater spirits than they entered it with, Neo especially. The months since the operation had been different for her. The first month, excluding the days she stayed at home with the team and Maggie, she was very lightheaded and uneasy on her feet all because of the immunosuppressants she had to take, all topped off with the first period she had.

Month two had been much better, though there were times when there were sudden bursts of pain through her womb area that caused her to collapse, once even during an S Tier Extermination Mission against a hive of 'Fuck-Nos'. Thinking back, she probably should have mentioned that to Doctor Otum, but by this point they were already boarding the Bullhead and he'd be with another patient already.

Month three was completely free of major mishaps, with her body accepting the foreign womb much more freely. The immunosuppressant dosage was dropped because of the acceptance, so she felt stronger and more stable than previous weeks. She was even going back on more advanced missions again. The team dropped down to the mid-level missions after the 'Fuck-Nos' incident to bring in money without risking their lives too much.

"Where to ladies?" the pilot called, having made sure that they'd secured Clementine into her seat and provided her with her own pair of Adel Fashion Noise Muffling Earmuffs, created and provided by the little Rabbit Faunus' Grandpa Rod, as Coco insisted she'll call him eventually once she was speaking properly in a few years' time.

"This location," Coco answered, handing the pilot her Scroll with the Team Tracking Beacon on, pointing towards where the rest of them were, "and would you mind sticking around for a little while after we're done? It should be a drop in, pick them up and go type deal."

"No problem."

* * *

The 'VFY' of Team CFVYN were currently on the run. That wasn't ever the plan, they weren't the type of team to run away from a fight; there were statue of both the Akkorokamui and the Nuckelavee that they defeated in multiple museums around Remnant that were proof that they didn't run.

This time, they _had_ to run.

When you're expecting to fight a Ghast, you often know what to look for. Possessed boulders and trees, giant creatures made from said possessed materials that can be destroyed just as easily as their real life counterparts, and great speed considering the size that they could be.

Even with their years on the field and both Yatsuhashi's and Velvet's ability to retain a good portion of knowledge that they read, especially from Professor Port's classes, they had never seen a Ghast that had done something like this.

Possession of inanimate objects was one thing. Possessing other living creatures was something they'd dealt with a couple of times before, neither of those encounters with massively pleasant endings.

Possession and subsequent mutation of another _Grimm,_ and the trio could very easily say that this was at the top of the list of things they most certainly did not want to ever do again as long as they lived.

They knew they'd be dealing with a Ghast and, from where they were, knew that it'd most likely try and go for a large body made of trees and rocks, which it did. But it was when the fight dragged on a little longer than they'd planned and a pack of Ursa joined in that things took a turn for the ugly.

There were four Ursa Minors and two Ursa Majors coming at them as well as the Ghast. When three of the four Minors and a Major were defeated, the Ghast did something that none of them had expected. It flew from its body of natural materials and straight into the Ursa Major.

The sounds made were unsettling to say the least. The bear-like Grimm cried out in pain as its body deformed, grew and warped under its ghostly symbiote's supernatural influence. The spikes on its back, already large from its status as an older and battle hardened creature amongst its peers, extended even further, news ones jutting out as well. A pair of arms not too dissimilar to the Geist's grew out of the upper joint of its front legs, spindly in comparison to its actual limbs but still effective for what they needed to do. Its head deformed as well, spikes growing even more over its bony mask and its jaw splitting down the middle so that it now had a flower like mouth as opposed to a regular looking one. And of course, it grew in size as well. Once standing 9ft tall, this abomination now towered over everyone at nearly 12.5ft.

So naturally, when this thing took note of them again, Velvet - being the leader of the team at present - felt that it was an appropriate and justified response to order Fox and Yatsuhashi to "Run like hell!"

And so they did.

"How is this thing so fast?!" Fox shouted as they ran, the giant abomination keeping up with them all as they weaved in and out of the trees in an effort to stay ahead of it as it just mowed them down like an inconvenience.

"We need to think of a plan," Yatsuhashi called out, "and fast. We can only run for so long." She didn't want to admit it, but he was right. As much as she'd hoped they could keep running from the problem presented to them, they had a job to complete. Even with this monumental curveball thrown their way, they should be able to deal with it.

"Call Coco!" Fox shouted, jumping up to a tree on his left and throwing himself off it to gain more distance for less effort. Velvet did just that. The first time this happened; 'this' being her given the lead of the group and something went wrong, she outright refused to see it through without Coco's help or input in any way. Now, she knew that if things were going wrong and she _could_ contact Coco, which in this case she could, they'd she'd do just that.

* _Hey Velvs,_ * Coco said the second her phone was picked up, * _how's everything coming along?_ *

The Rabbit answered with a short and brutally honest, "Horribly," moving the camera on her Scroll to show the mutated Grimm chasing them down.

* _What the fuck is that?!_ * the leader cursed upon seeing the Grimm.

"It's what happens when a Ghast possesses an Ursa Major. No time to explain, get here now!" The mage made a note though to scold her Mate for swearing so blatantly in front of their daughter, who she didn't see but knew would be there.

* _We're on our way. Keep it busy and try to keep in the same place. Tracking you will be easier, even from the air._ *

"This thing is charging through trees like they're nothing, you'll be able to see it from miles away!"

* _Okay then, at the very least try and get to a clearing. We'll be with you ASAP._ *

"Thanks Coco." The moment the call ended, Velvet had to duck under a rock that the monstrosity had grabbed and hurled in their general direction as it chased them down. Going off what little information her partner gave her, Velvet now had a goal in mind - survive until Coco and Neo arrived - and an objective to complete that goal - get to a large open space for the remainder of the team to arrive. "Guys, we need to find a clearing and keep it occupied, Coco and Neo are coming!"

"Understood Velvet," Yatsuhashi called out as he continued running, slicing down bushes that got in their way of a clean and safe run away from the thing.

"Right!" came Fox's reply, the copper haired man still bouncing between trees in an effort to distract it and slow it down, but to no avail.

"Fox, if you're going to jump from trees, see if you can get higher and search for a clearing."

"On it!"

"Stay close to us though, we don't want to lose you."

"With _that_ thing chasing after us, unlikely." Doing as he was told, the tan skinned brawler leapt off to the right, aiming to find something as fast as he possibly could.

"Yatsu, keep running, but bank to the left. Fox will search, we just have to keep running."

"I understand. Let us hope Fox finds somewhere and that your wives make it here soon." A small smile graced the Rabbit's face as they started their small bank to the left. She opened her weapon up, letting the blue light seep out for her to create the weapon of choice. It manifested itself into the form of a pair of cannon arm braces she'd seen on a Huntsman they were searching for a few weeks back on a mission.

They'd found him a very bad state, almost making it back to civilisation before his wounds got the better of him and he slipped away. Velvet took a lot of photos, using up nearly an entire roll of her special film to capture the likeness of the weapons - she didn't want to keep them for the sole purpose of her own armoury, they belonged to him and so should stay with him.

As they formed on her arm, she used the fact that she and her teammate were banking to once side to swivel around and start firing at the creature. The large, almost cannonball sized rounds the man used in his weapon worked wonders against the extra reinforced bones of the possessed Ursa Major, causing it to stumble after every hit and even knocking it down to the ground on the fifth impact. It freed so much space between them and it, so she stopped firing once it had tripped and hoped that Fox would find somewhere fast now that they had a large enough space to work with.

"Got one," came Fox's voice from their earpieces "half a click at 325º from where the destruction of trees seems to have stopped."

"Yeah, I shot one of the Huntsman's cannonball rounds into its chest, completely toppled it," the mage proudly stated as she and the 7ft swordsman altered their course.

"That explains it." He made a slight grunting noise, accompanied by the sound of wind blowing through his comms.

' _He's still on the move,_ ' the Faunus thought to herself. He continued talking as he navigated along the trees, stopping every time he needed to push off so he could focus everything on that action.

"You might… want to get a… bit more of a move on… because I think… it's getting up." Sure enough, the beast cried out in anger at what had happened to it, the sound reaching through the trees and frightening the natural wildlife away. If they hadn't known what was making that sound, the trio would have had every right to be scared of whatever creature could make a sound like that.

* * *

"Did you hear that?" the pilot called to the two women in the back of the Bullhead.

"Yeah, even over the engines. Must be what the others are fighting."

Neo started to sign in a slight panic, saying, " _we need to get to them as soon as we can._ " Clementine couldn't hear what the sound of the creature was like thanks to her earmuffs, but there was something that happened that caused an instinctive reaction in the child. Her eyes started watering and her bottom lip began to tremble, and while Neo just about heard the beginnings of crying, Coco swore she felt the sadness before she saw it.

"Oh, baby! No, it's okay. It's alright, Mommy's here." The gunner leaned down and grabbed the child out of her stroller and cuddled her close, rocking side to side and gently shushing her.

"I think I see something!" the pilot buzzed through, "a bunch of trees all falling down in a line, heading towards what looks like a field to our left."

Neo looked down at her Scroll and saw that Velvet's beacon was right next to where he pointed out the field was. " _That's them,_ " she signed to Coco, who relayed the message on to the pilot.

"Get us as close to that field as you can, we need to jump in and help them." He nodded an affirmative and turned to get closer, their height slowly dropping to a safe distance above the ground for them to jump out. "Can you stick around for long?"

"An area like this? No can do, lady. You'll need to get another ship to collect you."

" _What are we going to do about Clementine? We can't leave her here._ "

As much as she didn't want to say it, the fashionista answered with, "Then we'll have to take her with us." The child hadn't even seen a full year in this world, and she was already being subjected to a mission. Not exactly what any parent wants from their children, especially when they have no choice.

But sometimes, needs must.

"Grab the carrier from the back, we'll have to take it down with us." It took a minute or two for the pair to sort themselves out, collapse the stroller into a more compact and easier to carry size, and to also fit Coco up with the baby carrier and place Clementine in it. The Faunus child had to be on Coco's back because of the situation they were getting into, and having Clementine over her front limited her already hindered movement if - but most likely when - she needed to use her weapon, though she was still facing forward.

"Good luck!" came one last bit of encouragement from the pilot as the two women prepared to leap down into the action. Coco once again felt a twinge of fear that wasn't her own, so glanced backwards to look at Clementine.

"It's going to be alright sweetheart. Mommy's going to protect you. You, and Mama, and Auntie Ni, and Uncle Yatsu and Uncle Fox. It'll be alright." The child saw her Mother and grinned a small, toothy grin.

"Mama."

"That's right sweetie, it's Mommy." She took the opportunity whilst Clementine was distracted to leap from the vehicle, her weapon in tow. Neo came soon after, carrying her own weapon and also a far more compact baby stroller.

Even over the small vertical distance and with advanced hearing like most Rabbit Faunus do, the wind rushing through your ears makes talking in a normal voice and being heard impossible, so Coco was shouting to comfort the child. "I'm not going to let you get hurt. The only one who will be hurting is the big bad monster that Mama asked us to help with." She hit the ground, her boots digging into the grass slightly. "I promise."

The clothes that she was in weren't optimal fighting attire and she knew that. But thinking on it, what she was wearing was ten times better than the extremely casual comfort clothes Neo had on. No point in dwelling on that, they had a monster to take care of. The women took off across the grass, heading towards the destroyed treeline and most likely where their friends and partners were.

Sure enough, Fox leapt down from the canopy and ran into the middle of the field, indicating for Coco and Neo to do the same once he spotted them. Yatsuhashi and Velvet followed soon after.

"Thank the Gods your here," Velvet puffed having used more Aura than she would have liked to keep ahead of the mutant Ursa, "I wasn't sure what to do in a situation like this."

"You made the right call," the official team leader clarified, easing the mind of the Faunus before her, "if in doubt, always ask for clarification. I can help where I can if it's something small, but this is far from small."

"You're telling me," the mage playfully shot back.

Hearing her Mama's voice, Clementine called out. "Mama." Hearing the unmistakable voice of a child, _her_ child, chocolate brown eyes widened and peered around the beret wearing woman, spotting the child in her carrier behind her and seeing her smiling, reaching out to her with a cry of joy and another attempt to say "Mama", though this time it came out more as "Ma-a".

"You brought Clementine with you?!" the older Faunus questioned in complete disbelief.

"Well, yeah… Our pilot wasn't going to stick around, so it was either bring her along or leave her to be taken Oum knows where," her wife shot back.

"But why is she _here?_ Why couldn't she have stayed at home?"

"What, with no one there to look after her? Real smooth move there Velvs."

"Guys?" Fox said in a futile attempt to get their attention.

"Well then what about stopping at home first, and then coming here to help us second?"

"Guys," he repeated sounding much more anxious this time.

"If I recall, you called my Scroll whilst we were on the Bullhead already and told us to hurry to you. I was just following your instructions."

"I didn't know you had our baby with you. I would have told you to make sure she was safe first before coming here, heck I would have _expected_ you to think the same."

"Sure, in the heat of the moment, you would have had a logical brain to think 'Hmm. I think I need to make sure my daughter is going to be alright. I'd better get her to-"

"Guys!" he shouted, breaking up the argument.

"What?!" they both called back. That's when they realised their mistake.

"Oh... shit."

* * *

CLIFFHANGER! HAHAHAHA!

I haven't had a proper one in a while, I wanted one last one before the story wraps up in... oh God, 5 weeks?! Urghh…

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	106. Very Possessive

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Whilst the pair of them had been fighting, they had neglected to pay attention to their surroundings, despite the calls from their gauntlet sporting teammate. As such, the monstrosity had managed to gain ground on them completely and was now towering over them menacingly a mere 5 feet away, looking extremely pissed off at the lot of them, but especially Velvet.

Coco tried her hardest to shield her daughter from the sight of the monster, a Grimm wasn't exactly something you want a child to gaze upon, but with it being nearly twice the height of even Yatsuhashi, it was a near impossibility. The child gazed upon the creature, unintentionally looking directly into its four piercing red eyes. She processed it, just as it processed her. Sadly, it was much older and could process things faster, so it reared up on its hind legs, now dwarfing everyone at approaching 16 feet tall, and went to slam its front paws at the group in an attempt to crush them.

"Move!" Coco cried as its weight started to shift. The abomination began bringing its front legs down hard as the team all jumped out of the way, its paws smashing into the ground and causing craters where they landed.

"Coco," Yatsuhashi called as he skidded to a halt, "do you have a strategy to deal with this Grimm?" She gazed through her sunglasses at the creature who, after smashing the ground, was now using its new arms to pick up and possess the broken piles of rubble around it, thickening its already massively armoured body with stone.

"It's a mutated Ursa, right? And it's being possessed by a Ghast? That means that it's got all the strengths of an Ursa and the perks of a Ghast possession, but also all of the shortcomings, weaknesses and flaws of both creatures." She looked back from her team to the beast, its body now mostly grey, white and slightly brown with the rocks and its natural bone armour taking centre stage on its form, the only major specs of any other colour coming from its glowing red eyes and the black mist seeping through cracks in the rock formation. "We need to exploit that."

The mutant roared, letting the quintet know that it was read to take them on and also bringing in the aid of a couple of nearby Grimm, including the one Ursa Minor that Velvet, Yatsuhashi and Fox didn't finish before the Ghast took control of the Ursa Major.

Now, while the adults may have understood the notion of "put on a brave face" and "hide your feelings", Clementine was but a child with no such knowledge of such things. They may conceal their emotions, but she was still of that age where she expressed exactly how she felt.

If she was happy, she would smile and laugh at whatever or whoever made her happy.

If she was tired, she'd yawn if she needed to or just flat out fall asleep whenever and wherever she felt like it.

If she was sad, nothing would stop her from letting the tears flow and her audibly announcing her displeasure.

If she was terrified, like she was now, she was more than happy to start bawling her eyes out and screaming at the sight and sound of such a monstrous creature. All five adults spun their heads as best they could to see the child. Neo's eyes flickered to an ivory white, and both Coco and Velvet swore they felt a wave of terror run through them.

"Velvet, move!" Yatsuhashi cried as the Ursa went for another attack. Its claws, now sticking out much more than before and looking almost like blades, sliced right over her head as she ducked, one claw clipping and cutting the sensitive skin on top of her ears. She cried out in pain, a reflex that caught Coco's attention.

"Velv!" The Faunus continued to dodge its attacks as it kept trying to hit her, her dodging efforts much better than before and it not getting anywhere near as it did on the first strike. She was thankful for that, but couldn't take any more chances. "Everyone keep moving. We need to find that mask. Draw its attention any way you know how, just keep it confused." The team did as instructed, but Coco had to jump back and out of the way.

Through all this, the fashionista was trying her hardest to ignore the fact that there was a crying baby less than a foot away from her ears.

"Come on baby," she pleaded with the child, "stop crying. Stop crying for Mama, that's a good girl." A bullet or two whizzed past their heads, and when she turned to the source she saw her team doing as she instructed. But she couldn't stay here and do nothing, that wasn't the type of leader she was.

They were Bullhead Leaders, as she called them; people in charge of a group of Huntsmen or soldiers or even police officers who lead from afar, away from the actual battle. They saw a grander view of the playing field, sure, but they had no idea about the intricate levels of said battle.

She was the type of leader who was there on the front lines with her team, making decisions up on the fly and contributing to the mission at hand. And she couldn't be that type of leader is she was stuck here with her child.

 _Frustration._

Clementine started sniffling harder and almost started crying again the moment Coco began to feel that way, and the caramel woman realised that sooner rather than later, calming her wild emotions.

"No no no baby, no crying. Mama needs you to be a big girl now, alright?" The girl still whimpered, still teetered on the edge of breaking down.

"Coco, we need you here!" came Yatsuhashi's voice from afar, probably the only one of them who could have shouted and been heard from this distance.

"Give me a moment!" she shouted back, running back slightly so she was out of harm's way again. She unclipped the carrier off her back and cradled the child in her arms, singing a song to her. The only difference was that she sang a little more hastily than the original, but only out of an urgency to make sure her teammates were safe.

 _So much I wanna give you,  
So much I wanna say,  
You've changed our lives forever  
And it had only been a day._

 _And with our every single breath  
We'll love you for all time,  
Your Mom and I are proud of you  
Our sweetest Clementine._

 _It's been the greatest day  
And one I won't forget  
It's been the greatest day  
The day that we first met  
The day that we first met. {*}_

It was Clementine's song, one that a friend of Velvet's sister Harriet from back at her school wrote for them. Apparently it didn't take much to convince the young man to write something for them, especially since it was Harriet who asked him. Hearing stories about him, Coco was pretty sure the guy fancied her but wasn't taking the hints of 'Not my type' or just outright 'Not interested' from her. He'd learn eventually.

The child, whilst not fully developed in a mental or physical sense, still understood the significance of that song. It was _her_ song. Only her Mama and Mommy sang it for her, and when they did, it came with a promise that everything was going to be alright, at least for a little while. So when the song stopped, the tears followed soon after.

"That's a good girl. Who's the best girl? You are~!" she giggled slightly as she put Clementine back into the carrier. The child giggled slightly too, seemingly happy that her Mama was happy. "Now, Mama needs to help Mommy and her team, so it may get a bit loud again," she warned her, hoping that she understood. "Here, I got you your red pair of earmuffs." She pulled the noise cancelling earmuffs out from the pouch on the back of the carrier ready for her daughter to wear. She knew she had to swap the earmuffs as fast as possible, the battle going on behind them was rather loud.

As Coco reached to take the Faunus' pink noise muffling earmuffs off, a roar from behind drew her attention. She turned, only for her heart to drop as she saw a Beowolf leaping at her, its gaping jaw far too close to dodge out of the way or counterattack. She had to let it hit her, and more importantly she had to save Clementine.

A shatter and the sound of metal piercing flesh were the next things she heard, followed by the shadow looming over them dissipating and shrinking down into a smaller, woman sized one. The gunner peered around and saw Neo standing there, her arm still extended from where she'd stabbed the Grimm, the remnants of the beast still floating away in the wind.

"Thanks Shortcake," came the relieved sigh. The mute sheathed her sword and turned to help her friend.

" _We really need you back over there, how can I help?_ "

"We need a quick swap of her earmuffs. Pink ones off, red ones on. She'll still be able to see what's going on, but at least she won't hear it." The mute nodded in understanding and placed her hands over the pink earmuffs on the child's head, said child squealing as she saw the familiar and friendly face of her auntie.

"Ready?" she asked, her hands on the red earmuffs. "Three, two, one, go!"

It was a speedy procedure, and Clementine appeared to have even noticed.

" _Let's get you to the fight. We need our leader, and our team mascot._ "

"Clementine is not our team mascot," Coco deadpanned as she took the pink noise muffling earmuffs and put them in the same place the red ones were kept originally. "If you want a team mascot so badly, make your own." Now ready for battle, Coco grabbed her weapon, strapped Clementine back in and started marching towards the mutant Grimm ahead. Neo followed suit, but kept Coco's words in mind.

Fox took another few shots at the creature, the bullets doing no more than scratching the monster's rocky hide.

"We're not getting anywhere with this thing," he stated, "we need to do something else." The monster slammed a paw on top of him, one that smashed the ground below, but as he jumped it also swung one of its arms at him. He couldn't dodge it mid jump, so all he could do was bring his Aura up and take the hit. He flew back a few dozen feet, skidding to a halt. ' _Why does it feel like I'm always the one to get sent flying by these things?_ '

' _You're not,_ ' the voice of his wife replied, ' _so stop whining like a bitch and help us kill this thing._ '

' _Wow. No pulled punches, eh?_ '

The tri coloured woman scoffed. ' _Yeah, I'd still win even if I_ _ **did**_ _pull my punches._ '

' _Fuck you._ '

' _Later. For now, let's kill this thing._ '

"Any luck on finding that mask?" Coco inquired as she made her way back to the fight, swatting a flung rock away from her and Clementine with her handbag.

"So nice of you to join us," Velvet criticised.

"Our child was bawling her eyes out, and I wouldn't want to leave her lying in the middle of an open field, so excuse me for putting her life before our own. We can handle a situation like this, she can't."

"Fine!" the Faunus replied harshly, admitting she was wrong be evidently not too keen on it. "No, we haven't found the mask. It's got to be there though."

"Maybe not," the fashionista replied. "We've never seen a Ghast possess another living being before, so we don't know what to expect. For now, let's forget about the mask and focus on the next best thing. Fox, Neo, Yatsu; you need to get its joints exposed. Try getting it to look up. Velvet, you and I need to destroy that armour - we're the only ones that can. Jump back a bit and lay into it with the Gatling gun, or anything else that packs a big punch."

"'I've got that, I've also got that Huntsman's weapon from earlier this month. I used a couple of minutes of it, so it won't last as long, but it knocked this thing over without the rock armour pretty easily."

"Sounds like a good one, use that." The pair jumped back side by side, Coco finally revealing her massive golden gun whilst Velvet let her hard light cannon gauntlets come back onto the playing field. Velvet glanced over to her right, and saw Clementine staring at her and smiling at her Mommy awesomeness. Her sour expression faded slightly at the sight of her daughter's smile, and Coco felt the wave of _Peace_ flow through her.

"Neo," Yatsuhashi called, "we need to get it to look up and expose its chest. Think you and Fox could gain some height on the thing?" It was rare for the swordsman to offer any suggestion when it came to fighting, but the pink and orange pair weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She nodded at his suggestion, then signed back to her armoured teammate, " _Need footing. Get to the treeline._ " He saw what she was suggesting and complied immediately, running away from where they were fighting and getting closer to more footing for Fox and Neo. ' _We'll take out the small fry's, then get to the trees and attack from above. We need it looking up, so let's give it something to look at._ '

' _I love how your mind works._ '

' _Only my mind? I thought I had much better assets than that._ '

' _Well yeah,_ ' he acknowledged, punching a Beowolf and extending his blade to pierce its skull, ' _that is pretty obvious. I mean come on, you don't use it for things like talking, but that mouth is amazing._ '

' _Such a charmer,_ ' she grinned as she leapt high over another Beowolf's swing and fell back down, driving her feet into the creature's neck, followed swiftly by her sword, ' _I was thinking more along the lines of my smile, or my God-like charm, or my bum, or my hair. I'm not all mouth, y'know._ '

' _Fine; those things too._ ' They took off towards the trees, Fox jumping early to get on to the first branch of the nearest tree, Neo straight up teleporting to the canopy level.

"The hell are they going?" Coco called infuriated.

"I told them to go high," their tank of a teammate replied over the clash of bone claw and rock on metal, "you'll need its chest exposed to get it down, then we can go for the kill."

"… Good call Yatsu. We'll make a leader of you yet." She knew he'd decline the position every time he was offered it, but she wanted to get her point across; he knew what he was doing, and he was good at it.

"No thanks." Point proven.

The mutant Ursa was about to take another swing at Yatsuhashi, but a shot from behind drew its attention instead. It turned, but saw nothing but trees. Just then, a pair of flats landed on its head and kicked at it, making it wobble a bit and use its new arms to try and grab what was up there. After that, another shot came from a different angle, followed swiftly by another shot, then a stabbing pain through a single joint its armour around its neck as Neo's sword found an opening. It cried in pain, flailing wildly as more and more attacks rained from the sky; kick, shot, shot, kick, stab, shot, kick, stab. There was no pattern to what they were doing, so all it could do was try its best to hit whatever it was that was attacking from all around.

Fox jumped and shot at the beast, then Neo teleported and caught him, getting him back onto a trajectory that landed him on a tree branch. Once he was there, Neo would teleport herself close by and land a hit on its body with either her not practical for the situation shoes or her slightly more so weapon.

The Grimm's aggravation only grew as time progressed, standing higher and higher until at its full height in attempt to slash at either of the flying pests. But every strike they made hit where it hurt, and as such the Ghast possessing the body needed to relocate its face to stop the high hitting people from getting it.

"On its stomach!" Coco whirled the barrels of her Gatling gun as the cycloptic face of the Ghast appeared on the rocky underbelly of the creature. She let it rip, firing her weapon straight at it and sauntering forward as she did so. Velvet joined in on the heavy assault, firing hard light cannonballs that exploded on impact against the body of the beast, the Faunus grunting with every shot reverberating through her body, even with the construct being weightless. And Clementine, only seeing her Mommy being awesome and feeling her Mama's body vibrating like a washing machine had the child screaming in delight.

 _Glee._

Coco felt the smile grow on her lips as she continued to fire, and Velvet let out a small chuckle.

Seeing the beast drop down to be on its fours again, Neo took the chance and went for the finishing manoeuvre. She blinked over to Coco and Velvet, quickly signing to Velvet to copy her Mate's weapon. Once she had and had whirred it up to firing speed, the mute teleported the pair of them underneath the beast, getting them into the perfect spot to let loose at the exposed Ghast mask and hopefully the monster as a whole.

The two Gatling guns fired into the beast with perfect harmony, as was to be expected when the weapon fired hundreds of rounds a second. The Ghast screeched from the pain it was suddenly feeling, followed closely by its death. The Ursa, however, remained standing despite the possession being over. As the three females of the team leapt backwards, four if you counted Clementine, its extra limbs dropped off and its face started to contort back to normal again, and it began shrinking rapidly as the rocky armour fell from its body, leaving only a basic Ursa Major standing.

"Yatsu!" Coco called, "end it." The giant complied, running in and taking a single powerful swing at the beast's neck. Whilst the creature's bony plating was still thick, it was no match for the force of the strike, and as the head started to fall to the ground it evaporated into nothingness along with the body, their mission now complete.

Velvet let her weapon fade away, Fox made his way back down to ground level, Coco's guns stopped whirring and both Neo and Yatsuhashi sheathed their blades. The older Faunus made her way over to her daughter, who smiled and made positive noises at her sight.

"Who's that Clementine~?" the fashionista asked with wonder for her little girl's benefit, removing her earmuffs so she could hear properly again, "is that Mommy?" The older Rabbit looked suddenly surprised at her introduction, again for Clementine's benefit, and hid behind her ears. "*gasp* Where'd Mommy go?" The child looked around inquisitively, not being able to directly see her Mommy's face and so was surprised to see her 'disappear' like her Auntie Neo did. But she removed her ears a couple of seconds later, much to the joy of the child. "There she is~!"

"And how's my girl doing?"

"She's been as good as gold, the earmuffs really helped to elim-"

"I was talking about you."

The gunner looked at the Faunus with a perplexed look. "Oh, so I'm yours now?"

"I mean, you have got a ring and my surname that kind of says so." The taller - excluding extra ears - of the two stared through her sunglasses at the comment, the chocolate brown haired woman smiling after the eye contact lasted a little longer than normal.

"Touché."

"… I'm kidding, Chocolate Drop. I'm no more yours than you are mine, and even though I still haven't fully forgiven you for bringing Clementine here to a _battlefield-_ "

"Oh boy…" she muttered.

"-I know why you did it, and so I'm willing to overlook it slightly, if only on the grounds that you had literally no other choice. And it means I get to see my darling little angel again much sooner than I thought." She picked the child up out of the carrier and hugged her close, Coco coming in and enveloping the child in a hug so comforting and tender.

"How'd everything go with Doctor Otum today?" Fox asked now that they had some breathing space.

' _He gave me the all clear, said we could start trying for a kid whenever we wanted._ '

"That's amazing hun!" he cried as he hugged her tight.

' _Okay, ow._ ' Maybe a bit _too_ tight then. He released her with a snappy apology. ' _We may be strong, but I'm still reeling from the bloody mess I made._ '

"Urgh, did _not_ need to know that…" he muttered as she came back in for a much more tender embrace.

* * *

"What's our plan guys?" Coco asked as they walked out of the terminal in Vale after returning from their mission and doctor's appointment in Mistral.

"Aren't you our team leader?" Fox chuckled, "you're supposed to be the one coming up with ideas for us to do."

"Just because I'm 'Team Leader' doesn't automatically make me the 'Team Mom'. If anything," she mentioned as a large smile grew, "it'd be Granny Orchid over here. She's older than all of us, she should be Mom of the group."

" _By age,_ " the aforementioned woman replied in sign, " _yes, I'm 'Mom' of the group. But as it stands right now, you're the only one of us who's given birth. You're the only official 'Mom' of the team._ " Coco cursed Neo's logic, wondering if that came from the stab at her age, or the unwarranted 'Granny' moniker, or whether it was just stating a plain fact. Being with Neo for as long as she had, the sunglass toting gunner knew that the woman would have never said something like that in spite, but Coco couldn't help but slightly glare at her.

"Still hasn't answered my question though."

"Well, we've just come off a good win on a mission, and we now know that our trichromatic friend can have kids now, so I say that's a good enough reason for us to all go out and have a nice meal."

"Awesome! You guys enjoy yourselves." As Fox and Neo headed towards the smaller of the family's two car, Velvet ran between them and halted them as the rest got closer.

"Now I know I'm no expert wordsmith like Ms. Belladonna, but I'm pretty sure 'all of us' encompassed you two as well." She folded her arms, testing their resolve for their point of walking away. "Unless you've decided to form your own splinter team without us, then that's fine. Just don't expect any niceties when we come to blows."

"Coco…"

"What? I'm giving them a warning."

"We're not forming a splinter group," Fox assured, "but we _are_ trying for a child, and what better time than the present?" Coco rolled her eyes in annoyance, but couldn't quite keep the smile from her face. "Saw that," he joked again.

"Oh shut up." With a sigh, she waved them away. "Go on then, we'll go out somewhere and enjoy ourselves. But that means we get a pass at some point as well." Neo nodded at the offer, taking Fox's arm and walking away with him to the car as the remaining four stayed behind for a minute.

* * *

There wasn't a desperation when the two got home. They weren't eager to get in and rip each other's clothes off and get down to it, or if they were, they didn't show it. The couple were more than happy to let everything progress in its own time.

They knew that this time they were going to get it right. It was just a feeling they both had, and so they wanted it to be special.

After getting home and making their way up to the bedroom, the mute wrapped her arms around her husband's neck as his arms slinked around her waist. They started swaying to an invisible beat, soaking in the moment.

The scarred man broke their content silence. "It's so rare we get to do this anymore."

' _I agree,_ ' she replied. She leaned up and placed a delicate yet loving kiss on his lips. ' _But that makes the times we do it so much more meaningful._ ' He smiled at that, leaning down and placing a similarly chaste kiss on her lips. Neo returned the gesture, letting it sit for slightly longer than before, and Fox did the same after leaving less time for the last one to fade from touch.

Eventually, they stopped beating around the bush and let their lips connect fully in a proper kiss that showed the other how much they loved and cared for them. As the first item of clothing slipped off Fox's shoulders, they fell back onto the bed gently. Fox landed first and Neo on top of him. Once Neo had removed her top though, she rolled and pulled Fox so that he was leaning over her.

' _I love you Fox, and I trust you fully._ ' Knowing her history, the brawler was aware that she was very much the type of person to lead when it came to bedroom antics. It worked better that way; they wouldn't feel like they had power over her and try to make her stay, she was always in control of the situation. Letting Fox be the one in charge, letting Fox literally be the one to control the pace of how this would go, when it came to something as special as this moment, showed him just how much his wife truly cared for him and how much he means to her.

"I love you too, Neo. With all my heart."

* * *

{*} The song is a slightly personalised and shortened variation of Peter Hollens' " **Ashland's Song** ", a song that was written about his firstborn and as such I have used it as a basis for " **Clementine's Lullaby** "

And how's about that for some fluff at the end there? We've not got long left folks, it's sad to think this'll be over soon.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	107. A Birthday Present for Everyone

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Neo didn't make much noise. It was part of who she was as a person - Team CFVYN's mute, ice cream coloured swordswoman.

Even with such a title, that didn't mean that she was completely silent all the time. Her breathing was still audible if you listened hard enough. Every step she took made a sound. The only thing that was broken about her was her voice, so she couldn't speak.

And despite being her romantic partner for eight years, Fox had never really heard Neo throwing up in the toilet.

That was, until this morning.

He stood outside the room in the team's house, nervously tapping his foot on the floor and biting down on a knuckle as Neo was most likely by the loo throwing up a surprising amount. Coco, recognising the symptoms, went in there to help immediately, even going so far as to lock the mute's husband out of the room. Hence why both of their partners were standing outside.

Velvet, clad in a pair of pink check pyjama bottoms and a grey t-shirt to match, was the first to speak of the two of them. "At least this is a good thing."

"How does that help?" he muttered back through his fist. The mage sighed, not really understanding what he couldn't grasp.

"I mean, she may just be really ill all of a sudden, but my Lien is on it being morning sickness. And that's good."

"Care to clarify?"

"How are you not getting this?" she groaned to herself, "if she's going through morning sickness, it means that the transplant worked, and you could have a kid on the way."

"Velv, that's exactly what I'm worried about." The comment from the scarred man surprised her; he'd been fully supportive of the idea of having kids and if what was happening the other side of the door was what everybody thinks it is, then he was definitely on board with it as well. The Rabbit Faunus closed the gap between them, took Fox by the shoulder and gently lowered her body down the wall to the floor, bringing him with her.

"What's brought this on Fox? I thought that you were over the moon to have kids."

"I am," he reassured, "but that doesn't mean I'm not scared. I know that this didn't happen last time, and if I'm being honest the fact that nothing happened at all during that should have been a pretty big warning sign, yet things could still go wrong." She heard her friend next to her sniffle and his words get tougher to say through the growing pool of tears in his eyes. Anyone would be hard pressed into convincing her that this wasn't a child next to her with how vulnerable he sounded and how weak his resolve was. "We've wanted this baby for so long now, I just want this all to go right for a change."

"Hey, none of that."

"But it's true."

"Bullshit if it is." Velvet didn't care about the cursing as it stood right now. Clementine was still napping in the other room, and as such she was neither close enough to her it nor awake enough to process it. "Look at where you are now: you have a beautiful wife and a roof over your head, sharing the space with two of the best people in the world and my lovely daughter."

"Velvs, there's five adults. You only said four."

"Yeah, well, Coco's a bitch anyway."

"I am only through here," came the muffled voice of said 'bitch', "so I can hear every word you're saying about me." Velvet didn't even try to act sympathetic or sorry, she just smiled smugly towards the general direction of Coco, the couple both knowing that the banter between them was in jest.

"But do you really think that this one is going to go bad?" she asked, bringing the conversation back to them.

"The last one did…"

"Poor excuse. You had a botched set of tests that made you think you were. Even now after that whole fiasco was sorted, _I_ took a test. I came out as expecting, despite the very essence of my relationship with Coco coming from the fact that neither of us have the equipment to do things the old fashioned way. They were a load of crap and a waste of 50 Lien. This will be fine as lo-"

 **"** **Bleurgh!"** came the unmistakable sound from the woman by the toilet.

' _Urgh, gross._ '

' _I can't help it…_ ' Neo commented telepathically to her husband after his thought, bringing a small, fleeting smile to his face.

"…As long as you take everything a little easier. If you're really _that_ scared for her safety, I'd say take extra care of her," Velvet continued after the little interruption. "Not to the same level as you were with us and Clementine, but just a bit more care."

He glanced at the woman next to him. "What did I do to deserve a friend like you?"

"Picked up the White Rook," she replied with a smile, leaning her head on his nearest shoulder to show that she was there for him. He appreciated it. The sound of the bath being run appeared, so the pair had to speak up a little more to hear one another.

"Yatsu picked up the White Rook, not me."

"Yeah, well _I_ picked up the White Rook, so you can thank your lucky stars that I did. I was going to go for the Black Queen."

"Who went for the Black Queen in the end?"

"Oceana did. Remember her?"

"Nope."

"Really?!" He shrugged at that, her head shifting with the rise and fall of his shoulders. "Oceana lead Team OLHV {Olive}, she was with those three guys who everybody thought were tough until she put them in line. Her and Hiroshi were partners and she practically carried the team through the first year and a bit."

"Oh her. Gods, I remember her. She ended up being scared of Neo and didn't show her face around us for as long as she could."

"Good thing too, she annoyed me with her shrill voice. 'Ooh look at me, I'm Oceana. I'm tough because I've got these three backing me up to look tougher.' Honestly, it pissed me off no end."

"You ever thought what your team name would have been if you'd gone for that piece?"

"Funny you should say that, I spoke to Oceana during our formal graduation get together. Turns out she's not too bad once you get past the shrill of her voice. We figured out that the only team name that would have worked would have been if Hiroshi was leader, then we could have been HVOC {Havoc}, and even _that_ isn't really a colour."

"Hiroshi couldn't lead lemmings off a cliff," Fox claimed in response to the idea. Hiroshi wasn't the brightest knife in the crayon box, and on the occasion the teams had to swap leadership, Hiroshi had to hand the reins back over to Oceana after no more than an hour because he nearly got them all killed trying to attack a Deathstalker nest that was far larger than he thought it would be. So the claim that 'he couldn't lead lemmings off a cliff' was a fairly accurate one.

"Yeah. HVOC would have sounded pretty cool though, but the poor guy was never cut out to be a leader. Great at following instructions, not as good at giving them out." The copper haired man smiled at the thought. He had to admit, he wasn't the best at remembering people from his year at Beacon, but to be reminded of some of them every now and again did actually make him think back on his life before and how big of a gap there is between what he was and had back then, and what he is and has now.

The lock on the door beside them slid open where Coco and a paler than usual looking Neo exited.

"How're you feeling Neo?" Velvet asked, still sat by Fox's side but no longer resting her head on his shoulders. The mute's response was a weak looking smile and a slight shrug; with her arms cradling onto a hot water bottle she couldn't exactly sign her response to Velvet. Fortunately, the ever-present ability to communicate with Fox was still around, so he relayed her thoughts to the Faunus.

"She says she feels like 'someone transformed her stomach into a giant blender then proceeded turned it on', which I have to say is a pretty grim thought that I didn't know I didn't want in my head until now."

"Yeah, I can relate," Coco added. "Which is, somehow, a good thing." Neo glared daggers at her friend, prompting her to hold her hands up and defend herself. "Hey, all I was going to say was that if you're getting sick and feeling like someone's making a smoothie of your insides, then that sounds pretty similar to how I felt when we found out our pregnancy thing was going to work. And that's good. Until you take your tests - emphasis on the multiple use of 'test', I don't want a repeat of last time - then this is the only proof that you're pregnant."

Fox got up and hugged his wife, kissing the top of her head with a smile on her face. "I'm happy either way Neo. You're going to be an amazing Mom."

' _And you'll be a Dad._ '

"Not an 'amazing Dad' or an 'awesome Dad'? Just a Dad?" She nodded with a small smirk on her face. "Dude."

' _I'm kidding, you big softie. You'll be an amazing Dad too._ '

"Yeah I will," he replied, a small amount of smug seeping through in his words. A much more genuine smile came through from the mute this time.

* * *

*Bing bong*

"I'll get it!" Yatsuhashi made his way from the kitchen to the front door, decked in a pair of dark grey jeans and a black and green checked shirt. Opening the door, he was greeted by Oakley and Yubae. The gentleman still looked good for his age, but the lines on his face were far more prominent than they'd ever been, and his brown hair was turning far greyer than he'd like it to. His wife looked far better in comparison; her face still adorned with the wrinkles of age but less so than Oakley. It was her hair that seemed to have been hit the hardest, and even that wasn't too terrible. What once was a head of naturally bright pink hair had now faded with age, turning into a dusky pink colour that showed her age but still kept the abnormality of her pink hair in the front of everyone's mind.

"Hi there Yatsuhashi," Yubae greeted. The giant hugged the pair as they came in, both of them family to the swordsman. "It's nice to see you again."

"Indeed it is. Everyone else is in the front, make yourselves at home." Sure enough, when they entered the front room they were greeted by a wide array people. There was Maggie (obviously), Coco's Dad Rodney, Velvet's Mom Taffeta and another three of her daughters; Lily-Cooke, now 10 years old; Harriet, who spent a lot of the time messaging her brand new boyfriend on her Scroll; and Briar, the oldest of the current generation of Scarlatinas who had two kids of her own at Lily-Cooke's age. There was also Fox's Mom and Dad, Inbar and Cyprus Alistair, the rest of Team CFVYN and the girl of the hour.

Sitting in her chair, smiling and waving her arms around at the bright coloured balloon next to her, making happy noises all the while, was the birthday girl.

"Hi everyone," Oakley called out. A few people turned to greet them, including their own daughter. "How are you, my flower?"

" _Ripe as rain Dad, thanks for asking. What about you, did you get down here alright?_ "

"We did dear," her Mother answered, "the flight was only delayed by a few minutes, and collecting our things this end was an annoyance, but we're here now. Now, where's my spiritual Granddaughter?"

In a very similar vein that all of CFVYN felt that Clementine was their collective child, with Coco and Velvet being the legitimate parents of her, the team's families all extended that tradition themselves. So where Taffeta and Rodney had an actual granddaughter, Yubae and Oakley, along with Cyprus and Inbar had themselves a Granddaughter in spirit. At least, for the moment.

"Hello my little sweetie." The child made happy noises again as Granny Yubae came close and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead, her Faunus ears moving about as she did so.

"Now that everyone's here," Coco announced, "we can get started."

The group of adults all sat around and talked about what had been going on in their lives since last they were all together, with revelations coming around such as Harriet's boyfriend, even though she wasn't trying to keep that a secret with her constant messaging whilst she was there, and the fact that Dolly had been taken ill a few weeks ago with a nasty virus that somehow stemmed from certain Dust related products, but she was supposedly making a recovery in hospital back in Atlas and the true origins of her ailment were being explored.

All the while, Lily-Cooke was playing with Clementine, keeping her occupied and distracted from the very large number of adults surrounding her. Taffeta was not only overjoyed to see her Granddaughter enjoying herself and be spoilt on her first birthday, but to also see her youngest daughter falling into the role of cool young Auntie really well.

When six o'clock rolled around, Clementine looked just about ready to fall asleep where she sat after opening all her presents, and Neo's parents were thinking about leaving to head home as well.

" _Why didn't you stay down here for the night?_ "

"We did debate doing so, but your Father and I aren't as young as we used to be, and we don't have as much income as we once did either. The flights here and back are more than enough on their own, coupled with a night in a hotel or something and we thought that the best option for us was to make the round trip in a day."

"We could have very easily accommodated," Fox informed them, "it wouldn't have been that much of a trouble."

"I know darling, but we do try our best where we can and sadly this time wasn't such a time." Neo slightly downcast expression as well as Fox's reluctant acceptance of their reasoning prompted the dusky pink haired woman to bring the couple in for a hug. "Our love for you has never faded, for either of you, so don't think that this is a complete testament to that. You're our daughter, and our son-in-law."

"We know, Yubae. Thank you. But, before you go, would you mind holding off for like… a few more minutes?" The husband smiled as his In-laws both accepted his request and returned to their seats as the younger couple made their way to the front of the gathering.

' _You got it with you?_ '

' _As if I'd forget something like that._ '

' _You managed once before._ ' She gave her husband a very serious look that made it painfully clear that he was walking on eggshells.

' _You're lucky I'm not too far down the line, else that would have ended with either me in a bawling mess on the floor or you in a crumpled heap._ ' He let out a small chuckle to himself.

' _I would rather like to see our child into this world, so I'm going to get my share of jabs in at you until it becomes too much for you._ '

' _Why not, I don't know, stop making jokes_ _ **now?**_ '

' _I could,_ ' she scoffed, ' _but where's the fun in that?_ ' The tan skinned brawler got his extended family's attention with a forceful cough. "Thank you for coming. I hope that Clementine enjoyed her first of many birthday parties, because by the look of it," he gestured over to the little girl who was struggling to keep her eyes open for too long, Coco taking her cue to grab the little girl and cradle her whilst Fox finished his spiel, "she has most certainly tired herself out.

"Now, there is one present that has yet to have been opened, but this one is for me from Neo. Now, I knew what it was anyway, but you don't." A few people smiled at his playful nature, especially his own parents.

After a small bit of fiddling with the wrapping paper, there was a small pen box sized present. On opening it up, it revealed a pregnancy test. One with a nice healthy plus sign on it. "We thought we'd use this gathering to let you know that Neo is expecting our child."

The gathering burst into congratulations, going up to the couple and giving them hugs and praise as best they could with the number of people in the room. However Neo noticed that Maggie, whilst she heard a congratulations from her, didn't actually come up and wish them well in person, which miffed the mute. And having spotted her after everything had died down, the Arctic Fox Faunus looked far less cheerful than before, which saddened the mute.

After everyone had calmed down and people had left to begin their long journey home, all that remained were Team CFVYN, Clementine and Maggie. The boys were helping the two parents clean up the snacks from earlier as Clementine had been put to bed, which left Neo to speak with her friend alone.

 **N - 'Can we talk?'**

With a small laugh, Maggie responded, "Neo, I'm sitting right here, you don't have to message me." The ice cream woman sat down next to the fair haired Faunus, who at this point had been sat in the main room alone, staring out at the twilight creeping up on their part of the world outside.

 **'** **Got your attention though, didn't it?'**

"Yeah…" she sighed. The smaller woman wasted no time in hugging her friend close at her lacklustre response.

 **'** **What's eating you up?'** The lack of a response made Neo want to prod more, but gone were the days of her being 'Silent Bad Cop' in interrogation scenarios. Her upbringing and the friendlier half of her adult life persuaded her to let the blue eyed girl next to her explain in her own time.

The silence between the two was broken by the first sniffle from the younger woman.

As the illusionist turned to see if she was alright, the sight of her friend with tears silently streaming down her face caused her eyes to blink vanilla white and for her soon-to-be maternal instincts to kick in. She eased an arm around her shoulders, inviting her in as a shoulder to cry on. The invitation was accepted without hesitation, and Maggie practically threw herself into her friend's chest and broke down.

' _Fox?_ ' Neo asked to her husband a room away.

' _What's up?_ '

' _Can you bring in a couple of glasses of water and some tissues, then tell everyone else to leave us be for a while?_ ' The man didn't answer. Neo knew that it meant he was going through with it right away, and sure enough the tan skinned brawler walked in with two glasses and a box of tissues in hand. He placed them down on the table and leaned over to give his wife a quick kiss on the forehead. She smiled in response as he left the room, Maggie either too distraught to notice him entering and leaving or noticing but paying him no mind.

In times like this, Neo honestly wished she could speak, even in the simplest of ways. She wouldn't say she hated the fact she was mute, but when she could be comforting her friend and giving her words of encouragement to just "let everything go" and "cry until you're ready to talk", she instead had to sit there silently rubbing circles on her back and playing with her hair and tail, doing anything she could to _physically_ to convey that she was there when she really wanted to express that _verbally._

Unfortunately, pregnancy hormones kicked in after five minutes of Maggie crying into her chest, the Faunus' weeps coming down into sniffles once again. Having watched her friend crying and being all emotional, Neo realised that she too was tearing up, and seeing Maggie look up at her with the remnants of her tears still in her eyes brought Neo into full on crying, which in turn brought Maggie's tears back in full force.

The crying couple continued crying until both of them had drained their tear ducts dry. They drank from their now lukewarm glasses of water, then settled down again on the couch. Neo's right arm was still snaked around Maggie's shoulder as the Faunus' head rested on her bosom.

Neo eventually managed to type out a simple, **'Want to talk now, or are you going to cry again ;)'** a question that got a giggle from the Arctic Fox.

"No, I'll talk."

 **'** **Good, because I can't deal with you crying anymore'** Clearly she was joking, but Maggie faked a shocked gasp.

"What sort of friend are you?"

 **'** **One that could blow your mind in more ways than you can count, but can't deal with emotions like that for shit, especially when I'm pregnant :D'**

"Oh… so a best friend then?" she asked cheekily.

 **'** **Hell yeah'  
'But seriously, what's eating at you?'**

"It's… stupid. Nothing to worry about."

 **'** **People don't cry for nearly 10 minutes about nothing. Not convinced'**

"Thought so…" she smiled, one that only lasted a split second, but it was enough. "I'm… I'm jealous." The tri coloured woman raised an eyebrow and cocked her head. "I'm jealous of what you and Fox have now. You're having a baby, and that's brilliant, but that could have been me. _I_ could be the one who announced that I was pregnant, and you would have been over the moon for me, and we would have gone looking for a cot and pram and everything together, all with it growing inside and I-" She was silenced with a kiss. Nothing sexually charged, nothing romantic, just a friendly kiss on the lips.

 **'** **I don't want to see you upset Mags. You're my best friend, I've shared more with you than many best friends can claim they've shared with theirs.'**

"What, like bodily fluids and your man?" Not writing a response, Neo just winked and shot a single finger gun at her.

 **'** **There's not a lot I can do to make you more active in our kid's birth and all that, but I want you to be involved with them so much. The kid deserves a little more love than what just Fox and I can give. Be a proper auntie, almost treat her as your own.'**

"Are you sure?" the Faunus asked, slightly shocked at the proposition. "'cause let me tell you, your kid's going to be dressing up a _lot_ with me if they were my own."

 **'** **So long as you do too so that they're not alone** **and** **you take pictures, I don't mind.'  
'Fox might'**

"Don't care," she affirmed, "you gave me permission, so I'm going to do it."

 **'** **When have I heard you say** **that** **before?'**

"Hey! I was a fantastic dom that night, don't deny it. I bet you've never felt so powerless in your life, having something as amazing as me making you her personal plaything for the night." Neo paused for thought, wobbling her hand side to side; Universal Sign Language for "So-so". "I know you're toying with me; you've admitted it yourself only me and Fox have ever been dom to you."

 **'** **Got me there ;)'** The women giggled, letting their sadness fade away as they continued to talk for a few more hours on whatever topic came to mind. Eventually, Maggie did leave to go home, but not without Neo giving her one last hug out the door.

"Thanks again Neo."

 **'** **No worries. It's what girl friends do'**

"Oh, so I'm your girlfriend, am I?" she inquired, posing ever so slightly for the woman at the door.

 **'** **Girl SPACE friend'  
'But providing that Fox clears it up, I'm open for polyamory :*'**

"I was kidding."

' _I wasn't,_ ' she thought.

' _"_ _You weren't" what?_ ' Fox asked from the kitchen.

' _Later._ '

"But seriously, I can't think you enough. I don't know what I'd do without you."

 **'** **Well I know I wouldn't be carrying around my kid without you, so let's call it even'**

The Faunus rolled her carolina blue eyes, uttering a "Sure" as she did with a grin on her face. "Take care Neo." The mute waved her off as she got in her car and drove off back home. She smiled at the sight, knowing that she could keep making the Faunus happy even when everything else seemed to get her down. She quietly hoped that she was making Maggie as happy as Maggie made her, and if that was true then she could die in peace.

' _Seriously, what was that conversation about?_ '

' _For fuck's sake Fox, I was having a moment!_ ' she mentally chided him out of sight as she shut the door.

* * *

Urgh, I'm panicking now.

What am I going to do with my life soon? ' **Senseless** ' will be over...

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	108. Cooped up, Alone and Bored

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

Neo was bored.

She didn't want to be, nobody ever did, but that didn't stop the fact that she was really, _really_ bored.

As of right now, she was due to give birth in 10 weeks. That meant that, under Doctor's and Coco's direct orders, she had started her leave away from being a Huntress for a while until the baby was born, by which point she knew she wouldn't be bored if Clementine was anything to go by.

Speaking of, the tri coloured mother-to-be was babysitting the one and a half year old at home whilst the OG Team CFVY were out doing missions to get some extra incoming in for them all. And as much as she wanted to speak with someone, _anyone_ right now, Maggie was without her Scroll for a few days after an incident involving a balcony, a picturesque morning view and a loud noise - let's just say that Scrolls aren't very good at falling from heights onto concrete. And Coco was adamant that Neo refrained from calling any of them during the mission unless there was a real danger to her, Clementine's and/or the baby's life, less she'd have her stash of pregnancy ice cream raided. Ice cream became like a drug to the ballooning swordswoman; she had at least a scoop of it on every meal during the day, and more on things she really shouldn't have it on, like cereal or fruit.

Long story short, she was alone for the day without anyone to contact, hungry for something other than ice cream for once, and thus bored out of her mind.

She took a look at the clock on the wall and screamed in silent agony.

 **09:49**

' _Why does this day have to take so FUCKING LONG?!_ ' she cried. She'd been getting cramps in her legs while she slept for the past couple of nights now, but last night was the current peak of what she sadly felt like an ever-growing lot of pain.

On missions in the past - both with Huntsmen and with the criminals - she'd had slept in places that were ranging from uncomfortable to nigh impossible, but somehow she did manage to nod off each and every time, if only for an hour or two.

Last night, she got a grand total sleep time of 42 minutes.

The day before had been surprisingly hectic for her trying to arrange everything for when the pregnancy was upon them, especially considering she had to go and arrange it all in person due to her lack of voice to communicate over the phone. Coupling having to do all of that alone in her third trimester, she had to bring Clementine along with her for the ride, because it would be incredibly irresponsible for her to leave the very young child at home alone for hours on end with no one to feed, change her nappy or entertain her. It was safe to say that when she got home, she was so shattered that the only thing keeping he from falling asleep was the cries of a hungry and equally sleepy young Rabbit Faunus.

Once Clementine had been successfully fed, no small feat considering the child's tendency to throw her food around when it was something she disliked even slightly or when it wasn't either of her Mothers feeding her, she wouldn't sleep. Nothing too major, she just needed a soothing lullaby to send her off to the land of dreams.

Oh wait…

Neo was mute.

The pregnant woman managed to improvise, even under the sleepless conditions she was subjected to, by looking up videos on her Scroll of pre-recorded lullabies. As the singer on her video sang away (a voice the illusionist had to admit sounded an awful lot like Weiss - she'd have to chase her up on that), she was there rocking her crib gently to send her to sleep. She knew using videos wouldn't work forever, but as a short term solution to the problem at hand it worked perfectly. Well, perfectly until the add break in the middle of the melody. Times like that Neo wished she had no morals like her ex colleagues, because someone clearly had the bright idea to have an unskippable advert of a high octane, action packed, explosions and chaos everywhere video game placed in the middle of a compilation of _soothing lullabies._

' _I swear to Oum, I will find the asshole who thought that was a bright idea and subject him to his own personal hell,_ ' she vowed as Clementine broke from her state of near sleep into tears once again, banging her head against the side of the child's cot with a silent cry of her own.

She made another attempt to send the baby Faunus to sleep after crying herself at the previous failed attempt, only this time she came out the other end with a success.

' _I need something, else I won't sleep a wink._ ' So the mute, being naturally light on her feet, made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen without much thought of waking the sleeping baby upstairs. As she approached the fridge/freezer, she felt her own baby kicking.

' _You know where I'm going, don't you?_ ' she smiled at her child's antics. ' _What would I call you then? "Dairy"? No, that's too on the nose… Ooh, what about "Daenerys"? I could shorten that to "Daery", that's a little more subtle. But that logic, I could call you "Jill" - short for "Jillato"._ ' The tri coloured woman laughed at herself as she took a pot of yoghurt from the fridge, only to take a second to realise how silly that all sounded. ' _Now you're just being ridiculous Orchid; stop trying to decide the name of your unborn child whilst you're on a sleep deprived low. You need Fox to help with that too._ ' As she moved herself to the couch, she slumped down and opened her pot, thinking about the team. ' _I wonder how they're doing. They're probably doing alright, this is Team CFVY we're on about here. They were dealing with shit way above their pay grade even before I joined them, they'll be fine on any mission they're given._ '

* * *

*thwp*

"Red four," Coco droned.

*thwp*

"Green four," Yatsuhashi said.

"Bastard," Velvet cursed. She searched her hand for something else. Nothing. "Urgh." She took two cards.

*thwp*

"Green eight," went Fox.

"Oh that's not fair," Velvet moaned. Fox just grinned cheekily.

*thwp*

"Reverse it~," Coco sang. Fox grinned again.

*thwp*

"Miss a turn. You forgot to say 'Mono', take two."

"Piece of crap," Velvet groaned as she folded her arms in a sulk.

"Son of a bitch," Coco grumbled as she complied with the rules. "Yatsu, anything coming at all?" The tank leaned backwards slightly to peer out of the window they were sat near. The horizon showed absolutely zero Grimm.

"No."

"Dicks…"

*thwp*

"Pick two, Mono," he uttered.

"You saved me the trouble big guy…"

*thwp*

"…pick four, Fox."

"Hate to disappoint Coco, but…"

*thwp*

"…not with that in my hand. Pick _eight,_ Velvet. I choose blue."

"…I hate you all so much," she whined as she picked up eight cards. A distant roar could be heard from beyond the treeline as the Faunus' anger seeped through.

' _Finally, some Grimm to kill,_ ' the leader thought after nearly four hours of waiting. "Good. Because we're just going to keep on picking on you until we actually get some Grimm to kill, so get used to it."

* * *

' _I have nothing to worry about._ ' But here she was, now satisfied as best as she could be with a single yoghurt, but now more awake than she was before she sat down to eat and without anyone to be around to help her get back to sleep other than Clementine, the person she'd spent the past half an hour or so trying to get to sleep herself.

The mother-to-be let her head fall back onto the headrest behind her as her baby kicked again. ' _Looks like it's you and me again little one. Come on, let's try and get some sleep._ '

That did not happen. Leg cramps throughout the night, a really weak bladder and no sleeping position on Remnant comfortable enough to keep her under for more than a minute or so were to thank for that. And that was further proven by the fact Neo was up at silly o'clock in the morning today, complaining about said lack of sleep, lack of food and a complete lack of company, all at-

' _09:53?! Dear Gods, end this pain!_ '

* * *

Lunchtime managed to roll around far quicker once Neo found something to do with her time. Sure, most of what she was doing was cleaning, but feeling like "she weighed as much as a Balæna (a large, mostly passive (for a Grimm) Grimm Whale), only with half the beauty" the simple tasks seemed to drag on for much longer.

For lunch, or really any time Neo was eating with Clementine at the moment, she always tried to eat as healthily as she could. With no one else around, the young Faunus was looking up to her as a role model, and Coco made it pretty clear when her daughter was first born that if she found that her daughter was addicted to ice cream because of Neo's eating habits, things wouldn't end well for the pint sized swordswoman.

Taking that threat to heart - who wouldn't when it was Coco threatening you? - Neo was sat at the table with Clementine, both eating a nice healthy salad.

' _I know how much you like these things Clemmy,_ ' Neo said to herself as she sat down with the food, ' _so I don't expect any funny business._ ' She slipped on the headset she used for missions, having spoken to the new Mrs. Weiss Schnee-Rose about adding some new words and phrases to her headset. Weiss admitted that this wasn't in her field of expertise, especially with her and the rest of Team RWBY now back on the field for the foreseeable future, so she passed the request on over to her sister, Winter, who had more of a foot in that world.

The interactions Neo had with the elder Schnee child, though she really couldn't be called that anymore even if she was 1 year Neo's junior, were often very business-like. With Weiss, Neo had built up a friendship. With Winter, nothing of the sort happened. Though the Specialist did ask how her family was doing and how her pregnancy was coming along, she wasn't above making small talk from time to time, for the most part it was asking about what phrases she would like added to her headset.

Neo wished she could capture the moment she saw Winter's face after reading the list of phrases. It was beyond priceless.

* * *

"You do realise that I am going to have to explain why I need to add these to your headset," the snow haired military woman explained. Neo nodded in response, trying her hardest not to smile at the fact that the conversation between Winter and the team would be very entertaining to watch. "You know, Atlas Tech have been developing a new, artificial Voice Box for people like you." Her interest piqued, Neo raised an eyebrow and leaned in towards the camera on her Scroll a bit more.

"There are soldiers and Huntsmen like you who have lost the ability to speak during missions or on deployment, mostly at the hands of the enemy, but not always. Those who want to are taken away to surgery and have their old vocal cords and voice box replaced with artificial ones, ones that have been used for nearly three years now and are only improving by the day. As it stands, we have 6 people who have had this surgery in the Atlas Specialist Program alone. All of them have recovered so well that those who have joined after their recovery has finished didn't even know what happened until they asked about the scars."

' _I could speak again… I could talk with my friends, actually_ _ **talk**_ _to them for once in my life. I'd be normal again._ ' Clementine's crying from the room over broke her out of her trance, and without even acknowledging the Specialist, she got up as fast as her pregnant body allowed her.

The blue eyed woman on the other side of the call hummed at the sight. "Interesting…"

A lower ranking soldier entered the room, foregoing a salute and cutting straight to the subject at hand. ' _A rookie mistake,_ ' she observed with a subtle shake of her head,' _how he managed to rise to Corporal like that I have no idea. Perhaps James is going soft._ ' She allowed herself to call the aging General by his first name in her head only - they had been close colleagues for long enough that it never felt like an abuse of their friendship; she only did so out loud when the situation was appropriate.

"Specialist Schnee, we have a-"

"Not yet, Corporal," she silenced him without even raising a hand or her voice. "I wish to discuss things further with my associate, and I may be some time still. And for the record _Callum_ ," the junior soldier physically flinched at the first name drop by his superior, "should you wish to address me again, you will do so with a knock at my door, and a salute when you are invited in. And even under scrutiny as you are now, you will remain with good posture and the stoic face you were trained to wear in situations like these." The Corporal registered her words of criticism, standing to attention immediately after she had finished speaking.

"My apologies Specialist Schnee, it won't happen again."

"Better. Now, would you like to repeat what you came in here to say?"

"No Ma'am, it can wait or be passed on."

"Very well. Is that all?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"Good. You are dismissed Corporal Mitty, but consider what I said my first and only warning for you." He opted not to speak again, only saluting and seeing himself out. A message popped up on screen.

 **'** **You can be quite ruthless sometimes "Specialist Schnee"'**

"I do hope you are not trying to mock me, because I could end this call now and you would be without your… upgrades entirely." Neo smirked slightly, but remained quiet on the matter from that point onward. "You seem to have a hold of things your end," Winter commented, now noticing that Clementine was sat in Neo's lap, being bounced on her knee with the young child smiling, "even without any speaking, you managed to calm her down significantly."

"Wise," she said, pointing at the image of Winter.

"I am not my sister," the fair haired woman mentioned to the child. The mute rolled her eyes as she typed something to her.

 **'** **First, Clementine can't understand you properly. Second, you have the same skin colour, eye colour, hair colour and even clothing colour scheme as your sister, so she's going to think your the same person. Especially over Scroll link. Roll with it until someone who can speak can explain it to her'**

With the slightest of sighs, the soldier agreed to the terms presented. "I see now why you were after these upgrades to your headset. But what about that other offer?"

"No," she replied using the headset. She continued on as best she could using the device. "Too risky. Not enough time." Sadly, there weren't enough phrases to continue as she was - more reason to get the upgrades, so she finished with a typed message.  
 **'And I would rather live my life as I am, as a mute, than have that in me. I feel like I lose part of myself if I go ahead with it.'**

"I see. Then I cannot and will not try to deter or persuade you any longer."

 **'** **Thank you. Besides, what harm is it to teach my baby and Clementine here some Sign Language? It'll come in handy further down the line.'** The blue eyed woman on the other side of the screen smiled at the comment.

"I suppose you are right."

* * *

"Abul!" Clementine said as she picked up a slice.

"Good girl!" came the reply from Neo's headset. The child looked at her with a slightly confused look - she was used to Auntie Neo being silent - but smiled at the praise she recognised. ' _You're such an adorable little girl,_ ' she thought, ' _I can't wait for you to meet your cousin. You're going to be the best pair in the world, and nothing will stop you._ ' The child kicked in her Mother's tummy to prove that they heard her. ' _Ooh, you agree, do you? Let's see what Clementine thinks._ ' "Clementine. Listen. Be careful."

Neo stood and lifted her top up to expose her belly, then stood next to Clementine's highchair. The young Faunus stopped chewing her apple slice and looked at the belly for a rather long time. Eventually, the unborn child kicked, and Clementine saw it slightly, cheering at the sight. ' _She likes it, little one._ '

In a move that shocked her, Clementine leaned closer and hugged Neo's tummy. She saw this and was instantly tearing up. ' _She_ _ **really**_ _like it._ '

* * *

"Thanks!" Coco called as the Bullhead pilot set the engines to max and lifted off once more to head back. "Alright, home stretch guys. The last one for a while for you Fox."

"Coco, we have 9 weeks to go. I can do a couple more before the birth, no need to cut me off now."

"I'll say it again, seeing as you probably have Grimm residue in your ears. This _is_ the _last one_ for a while for you." She grinned, both because she was enjoying her little tease at the man and at the face Fox was making, which to her looked like part annoyed, part scared out of his mind. "Did you catch it that time?"

"You know, I would have thought becoming a parent would have made you less terrifying, not more."

"What can I say?-"

"'Sorry' would be nice," he shot in as fast as he could.

"Look, I may be tired from having done a ten day mission with next to no action, but I can still beat you to the ground for being a back chatter."

"Or, we could all just get home, Coco and I can see our daughter, and we get some sleep in a nice, comfortable bed. I'd be up for that." Velvet was on a rather short leash at the moment, having spent a lot of the time they were waiting around getting more and more irritated at the rest of Team CFVY for picking on her whenever they played card games to pass the time. "Who's with me?"

"That sounds like a really good idea," Yatsuhashi mentioned, carrying his and also someone else's things from the Bullhead over his shoulder like it was nothing.

"There we are, the votes are in and we are going home!" The Faunus sped up to get to the car faster. "And you'd better hurry, because I'm the one with the keys, and it's a 2 hour walk home from here."

The team did manage to catch up to the irritable bunny, who by the time they'd pulled up in their driveway at about nine at night had mellowed down significantly.

"Huh, didn't expect the house to be dark at this hour," the Faunus mentioned as they got out and headed to the door, the light level fading but still being bright enough for no streetlamps to be illuminating their surroundings.

"Not that any of you would know from direct experience, but pregnancy is really draining on the body. She's probably called it a night and snuck up to bed, tired but not completely out of it. Let's do our best not to wake either of them." With nods of understanding from FVY, Coco lead the four of them in through the front door as stealthily as they were able. With Yatsuhashi with them she most certainly had her work cut out for her, but she persevered and got them all into the front room with no fuss.

"She's not downstairs at all," the bass said in hushed voice, knowing full well his voice carried far and that he didn't want to wake a sleeping Clementine, given the time it was.

"That's very odd." Everyone nodded at the tan skinned brawler's comment, Coco even having the idea to talk to Neo telepathically to see if she's around anywhere. "Good shout Coco."

"No, no shouting," she quipped back.

With a small tut, he began. ' _Ni?_ '

'…'

' _Neo, sweetie, we're home._ '

'…'

' _Hello?_ '

'…'

"She's not replying, so she might be out."

"Not with my baby girl at this hour she's not," the mage commented, her Mate agreeing with the sentiment.

"Shall we have a look upstairs first, then worry once we've given the whole house a once over?"

"Yatsu's got a point there."

"Of course I do, I'm the moral centre of the team." Everyone left their all belongings in the front room and silently made their way up to their bedrooms. The plan was to search around to find Neo and see if she'd left the house with Clementine in tow. Their first stop on their search was Coco and Velvet's room, for that still had Clementine's bed in at the moment. Walking in, they saw the room was bare.

"Well, that's not good."

"Yeah, no fucking kidding."

"Velvet," the leader chastised, "you're normally the one ribbing us for foul language."

"Sorry, but I'm still irked at what you all pulled on the mission and I walk into my room back home to find my daughter not in her bed. Forgive my potty mouth at a time like this."

"Sorry Cottontail, I was just trying to lighten the mood."

"Yeah, well-"

"Guys," Fox interrupted, "no need to lose your heads. I've found them both." The Mated pair followed the copper haired man back to his room and, on his request of a simple "shush", they peered inside the room. There, lying on the bed with Clementine snuggling close to her, was Neo. The young girl looked completely content with her current position, and her pregnant Auntie slept with a smile on her face.

"Dear Dust, she looked so peaceful." Velvet, having suppressed a very loud "Aww!" at the sight, took out her Scroll and snapped a few photos as best as she could with the minimal lighting they had on offer.

"Would you like to separate them?" the giant asked.

"Gods no! They're so happy where they are right now, I don't want anyone breaking that up. We'll sort this all out in the morning." And so the four original members of the team left the room, leaving the oldest, the youngest and the unborn members of their family in that bed, comfortable and happy.

* * *

Mark it on our calendars, folks. Thursday 18th July is the end.

Also, I decided that the folks over at AO3 deserve some ' **Senseless** ' love too. So if you use that site too, head over and follow the ' **Senseless** ' Series: I'm uploading the story separately in its three distinct parts: The Couple (Chapter 1 - 42), The Team (43 - 83), and The Family (84 - 110), with each going out as a complete story. In fact, if you get there now with only Chapter 1 uploaded, you may see the remaining chapters going up one after another after another after another after another after another later on today.

Also, also: Merry 'murica Day to all my readers in the US! Enjoy RTX for those who are going!

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


	109. One Last Time with Him

**KEY**

"Normal Speech"  
" _Sign Language_ "  
' _Thought_ '  
 **\- 'Scroll Message'**

* * *

There was a knock on the bedroom door, and Fox called to whoever was there that they could come in. "Hey Foxy boy."

"Hi Coco," he replied with a small grin, one that didn't last too long. It was late, and despite having gone upstairs hours ago Fox hadn't found it in him to fall asleep yet. The fashionista plonked herself down on the bed next to him, his wife sleeping as soundly as she could next to him. She was out like a light the second her head hit the pillow.

"How're you coping?" she asked. The honest answer was that he was panicking. Not a full on panic attack, but he felt like he was close. Within the next three weeks he was going to be with his wife in the hospital and she was going to have their baby. He, the boy who walked into Beacon with no sight and no hope of any kind to find anyone even remotely interested in him, was here with his wife by his side and their child in "her" womb ready to be born any day now.

But instead of admitting that to Coco (besides, she knew anyway - they'd been friends since Beacon, teammates just as long) he muttered a simply, "I'll manage."

There was a brief lull in communication between the two as the room returned to a natural state of silence. "This is the part I'd usually make a joke or call you out on that, but I think you're right." Resting her hand on his scarred shoulder, the caramel haired mother continued on. "You've grown so much from the scared blind kid I had under my wing on the first day, and admittedly for the first month, back at Beacon. You have matured… mostly, you have a wife and a kid on the way, you have your _sight;_ you are a completely different person to who you were when I first saw you. And yeah, you're still Fox Alistair, but you wouldn't recognise your 17 year old self.

"Do you really think so?"

"Of course I do," she answered. Once again, there was a perfect opportunity for sassing him, but doing so would ruin the moment, and right now he needed reassurance, not smartass comments. "I was the one person on the team, besides your wife after she first turned up, who had to keep an eye on you constantly. On all three of you, four when Neo showed up. And oh boy, did I hate it when that happened."

"Why? Frightened of a little competition were you?" the copper haired man teased.

Coco scoffed at the idea, causally and nonchalantly complimenting herself in the process. "Please, like anyone could stand up to me and my charm. No, I'm talking about paperwork." The woman shifted herself again, sitting much closer to Fox now as they were getting into a much more natural conversation than before. "I know you don't know this because we were never explicit about it at all, but team leaders had to write up an individual report for each member of their team at the end of each week. Every third week we used to go and speak to Professor Ozpin about the reports for missions, but also the ones for teammates."

"See I knew why you disappeared every third week, but I wasn't aware that you had to do things outside of those meetings."

"Stacks of the stuff. You think doing three of them is bad, imagine what I had to do when we suddenly became a five piece team. I had binders for each of you." With a brief shudder, she raised her left hand to about eye level, then dropped her right hand to be level with her abdomen. "They got this big sometimes, all on you. It was a monstrous task, especially with four of you, but I coped. In that time, I had to notice small behaviour differences, little things that would have normally gone unnoticed by someone simply glancing over it all. It was Ozpin's way of making us notice the smaller things and how they had an effect on the things at large."

"That's… kind of creepy when you think about it."

"Tell me about it. I had to do these things at night so none of you would notice, not because you would say anything if you did but because you weren't really allowed to know I was doing them. Don't ask me why, I'm not sure myself." The man raised an eyebrow at the answer given. Ozpin sure had a way of confusing them, even long after they'd left Beacon to live their own lives as Huntsmen and Huntresses.

"I don't want to mess this up." Fox glanced over to his side, seeing Neo sleeping beside him, her face not exactly peaceful, but somewhat content with how she was right now. "They both going to need me, and I don't want to mess it up."

"Trust me, I know the feeling. Sure, I was Mom in the situation, not Dad, but the unease was still present, even if I didn't show it. But Clementine is proof that we as a team can raise a child to be healthy and that we care too much to let anything happen to them. And little Clemmy will totally go into 'Big Sister Mode' when yours will be born. She'll have lots of support and love around her, we just-"

' _Fox…_ '

"Hold on a sec. Yeah hun?"

' _I feel weird._ '

"You've been saying that a lot, it's probably a-" he was interrupted as she convulsed once and suddenly felt the mattress underneath them grow wet. "Oh fuck…"

* * *

"Velvet!"

"I know Fox, your wife is giving birth; I've dealt with the same! Now, kindly shut up, let me focus on driving and thank your lucky stars she decided to make her grand entrance this late in the day. If the way you're instructing me to drive happened with traffic around, I would have wanted it known that it was you signing our death warrants."

' _Argh, this feels weird,_ ' Neo commented with another contraction, ' _like,_ _ **really**_ _weird. And it hurts._ '

"I know hun, but it'll be fine. Velvet's nearly got us there, you'll be in a bed and you'll give birth and all the pain will be worth it."

"You don't have a clue what you're saying, do you?" the Faunus quipped from the driver's seat.

"…No."

"Then shush and comfort your wife."

"I was trying to do that!"

"Well try harder!" she shot back as she rounded a corner slightly faster than she should have.

' _Stop fucking arguing and get me to the hospital!_ ' The mute screamed again as there was another contraction, but no sound came through even now.

' _Y'know, doctors are going to be really creeped out with someone giving birth in complete silence,_ ' he commented mentally to her.

' _I don't care about that; I want her out - she's really starting to hurt now._ '

"Alright, I'll see. Ve-"

The mage in the front cut the soon-to-be Father off before he even got her name out. "Don't you fucking dare! I will throw you out and you will walk to the hospital, get there late and have missed your own baby's birth. So do not ask me how far away we are, just be patient."

"…She said, 'shut up Fox', so I don't know how long it'll be."

' _Well you're a big help, aren't you?_ ' she said in jest before another contraction caused a silent cry of pain to come from the woman.

* * *

Once they arrived at the hospital, there was a doctor waiting by the door. Coco had called them up beforehand from their home and warned of her arrival, reminding the hospital staff that she was down for a mandatory caesarean which they acknowledged.

Velvet saw them in, but left Fox and Neo just inside.

"Do her proud," she said to him through a tight and loving hug, "and message us when she's here."

"I will do." The Rabbit placed a quick kiss on his cheek before he went to catch up with the doctors taking Neo away and she left to go home, get a bit of sleep in her (if she could with all the excitement around her), then bring Coco, Clementine and Yatsuhashi back with them to see the newborn.

Fox caught up and got there just as they approached the room for the surgery. The medical professionals were all spewing words and orders around each other that became nothing more than an unintelligible mess of noise that he tried to drown out. All he could focus on was Neo until she was carted through the door and Fox told to remain outside.

"Can't I go in there with her?" he asked to the nurse, a woman with shining silver hair, standing watch.

"Until we get you some surgery garbs, I'm afraid not sir. You can go in a little later, perhaps to cut the cord, but for now it's best if you wait out here." Not the most optimal of choices, but he complied with a nod and found a chair outside to sit in and wait. That lasted all of thirty seconds before Neo's voice rang in his head.

' _Fox? Fox, where are you?_ '

' _It's okay Neo, I'm here. I'm just outside._ '

' _Well, why aren't you_ _ **inside**_ _like you said you'd be? And you'd better answer quick, they're going to put me under soon._ '

' _They said didn't have the garbs for me right now, but they'll find some soon and that I'll be in later._ ' The pregnant pause [pun completely intended] left Fox worrying that she'd already been put under, but that worry soon faded once he heard noises from the room Neo was in. The worry was instead replaced when he heard people calling for her to stop thrashing. The copper haired boy jumped up and gazed in, seeing his wife reaching out towards the window.

' _Come here Fox, please! Let me be with you when I go under._ ' Not needing to be told twice, he shot into the room.

"It's alright Neo, it's alright. I'm here." Not really listening to what the doctors had to say right now, he grabbed her hand and held it tight, and with that her thrashing stopped on a dime. They realised, despite none of this being written down and recorded prior, that having her husband in here with her was probably the best option.

"Sir," one of the doctors said, "I need to ask you to grab some theatre garbs if you're going to remain in here." He indicated to the far wall where there were two green garbs identical to the ones currently being worn by everyone else.

' _Won't be long,_ ' he told his wife.

' _Don't be,_ ' she replied, ' _if I go under and you're not holding my hand, I will kill you when I get the chance._ ' He smiled at that, kissing her hand as she had another contraction. He wasn't smiling much anymore as the squeezing made a couple of joints pop in his fingers. Cradling his aching digits and informing the medical team of his wife's request (some asked how he knew, his response was "long story, no time"), he got dressed for the occasion and came back, all before Neo went under.

"Alright Mrs. Alistair, we're going to give you something now. You will feel drowsy, but let the sleep come. We'll bring you back once the surgery is over and move you to a maternity ward where we'll give you your baby." Neo nodded as they stuck a needle into her right arm.

' _Oh, motherfucker!_ ' the mute cursed, doing her best not to writhe at the pain. ' _I'mma kill him once I'm on my feet again._ ' Fox simply laughed.

"Is something the matter Mr. Alistair?"

"No, but my wife doesn't like you for doing that." The doctor nodded, then started the injection.

' _Oh jeez, this does feel really weird._ ' The drug was potent, as Neo's eyelids already started to feel extremely heavy. ' _I'll be alright, won't I Fox?_ '

"Of course, Ni. You'll be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, not while I'm here." She smiled a weak smile, her body trying to pull her into a deep, comfortable sleep. "When you wake up, you'll have the best battle scar you could ask for, and a beautiful child waiting to see her Mommy. We'll live happily as a family." She didn't hear it all, the anaesthetic knocking her out before he could finish the sentence, but that didn't stop him from continuing on. He felt like he needed to.

"She'll be alright Mr. Alistair, we promise."

* * *

 _Neo was startled awake, though she wasn't sure why. Her gasping breath echoing in the seemingly endless white void she woke up in. She glanced down at her attire, and saw herself clad in a pair of white pumps with equally white socks, some thigh length shorts (also white), a white t-shirt with a white jacket over the top akin to the jacket she wore in her combat attire, albeit with zero pink in its design at all._

 _"_ _What?" Even her voice echoed. Where was she, and how on Remnant did she get here? She remembered being carted into hospital with contractions, which meant her child was on the-_

 _Wait._

 _Did she just speak?_

 _"_ _Hello?" Her eyes widened in surprise. She most certainly did. "Hello." She chuckled. 'Dear Oum, I can hear myself chuckle.' She went through various different varieties, timbres, pitches and intensities of "hello", all because she wanted to experience it all. Speaking was such a distant yet familiar memory to her, and she never got a chance to say things._

 _"_ _Hi, my name is Neo. Short for 'Neopolitan'. Long for 'Ni'." She laughed. Oh wow, her laugh was amazing. It was so much more mature than the last laugh she remembered having. It was the day before her Aura and the medication went to war in her body. Having recently been introduced to the fantastic series of films and TV programmes of Monty Python by Maggie, the ice cream woman spent the next 80 seconds saying her shortened nickname over and over again in the style of the Knights from one of their films. "Ni! Ni!"_

 _Eventually she got bored, so moved on to say other things. "I like you. It's a date. I love you Fox. I do." She let out a soft sigh on the last one. She thought it was every girl's dream to say those words, and for her she_ _ **definitely**_ _wanted that said._

 _That was another thing, she hadn't said anyone's name in so long. "Fox Alistair, my husband and father to my child. The one person in this world I feel was made for me. Magnolia Frio, best friend, donor of my womb and fluffiest butt ever. Coco, Velvet and Clementine Scarlatina. The best three girls in the world. Yatsuhashi Daichi, the tallest man I know with an equally big heart."_

 _"_ _Is there anyone else I should know about?" came a second voice in the void. Neo spun around, trying to pinpoint its location. She couldn't, for it seemingly had no origin. It came from everywhere and nowhere all at once._

 _"_ _Okay, what is going on here?"_

 _"_ _Oh my flower," the voice said again, with much more of a direction now - and it just so happened to be right in front of her, "I'm surprised at you. You were so smart." The voice grew outwards, finding a centre and making a body to accompany it. One she knew very well. "I know you still are, but I would have liked to have seen you figure this out sooner." Neo gasped._

 _Staring into pink and brown eyes were eyes of piercing orange. A pair she recognised instantly. "Hello again flower."_

 _"_ _Uncle Lang?" His body completed its materialisation, standing in front of her just as she remembered him from all those years ago. He stood with full hair, a strong face and eyes that glowed with light and life instead of the body he'd died with, dressed in a white version of his usual suited attire. "Am… am I dead?"_

 _The man laughed at the thought. "No my dear, you're not dead. You're medically under. You can be dead if you want, just come with me and we'll leave this place, but in doing so you will pass from the mortal realm as well."_

 _"_ _Mortal realm? What are you on about Lang?"_

 _"_ _Right, how silly of me. This place, where we are right now, is known as the World of Void."_

 _~void~_

 _~void~_

 _Neo stared at the space around her as the final word echoed ominously._

 _"_ _The world in here works differently to what we're used to. Time progresses how we want it to, but we do not have complete control over it."_

 _"_ _Okay, but how do I get out?"_

 _"_ _Orchid," the weird Lang sighed, "you can leave whenever you'd like. Just take the gateway over there." He pointed to the side and Neo saw a door, simple in design but completely white, a detail that no longer surprised her. The woman began making her way towards it, stopping just short. She was unsure what compelled her to do so, but following what her instincts said next she ran back to her late Uncle and caught him in the largest hug she could muster._

 _"_ _I miss you so much Uncle Lang."_

 _"_ _And I miss you, my little flower."_

 _"_ _I still think about you every day."_

 _"_ _So I see," he chuckled. "Your family were truly beautiful to come with you to see me last time you were in Atlas."_

 _"_ _You saw that?"_

 _He simply nodded. "I could not find words in the lack of time in here to express how proud I am of you Orchid."_

 _"_ _Thank you."_

 _"_ _It was my pleasure. Now, we can continue to talk if you so want to, or I can let you get on your way and see your daughter."_

 _"_ _Why is that an option? You said that there's no time in here didn't you?" The ex-Butler smiled._

 _"_ _There's the smart cookie I know and love." As he ruffled her tri coloured hair, the pair walked away from the door slightly, finding a pair of chairs and a table. "Now, where do you want to start?"_

 _"_ _I don't see why I need to tell you; you saw everything."_

 _"_ _Yes, but let's pretend that factor is null and void for the mo-"_

 _~void~_

 _~void~_

 _"_ _Does it always do that?" Neo asked._

 _"_ _Yeah. But only if you say the word 'void'."_

 _~void~_

 _~void~_

 _"_ _Well, if we're not counting your ability to see whatever I did, I suppose I ought to… wait… did you see_ _ **everything**_ _I've done?"_

 _"_ _I wasn't going to mention it, but yes. I did not watch, if that's what you mean, but I knew when you were doing it."_

 _"_ _Okay, in order for me to keep my sanity, we are going to avoid that subject complete-"_

 _~void~_

 _~void~_

 _"_ _...why?" she huffed in frustration. Her uncle simply laughed it off._

 _The pair talked for a long time, starting with what she and Fox did with the money he left them after he passed, moving on to her first year at Beacon, which was also her second and third year as well - a feat the older of the two couldn't scoff at and was frankly incredibly impressed at how she managed, especially hearing about it from a first-person perspective as opposed to viewing it from an outsider's perspective - and even on to the team's Fourth and final year at Beacon._

 _After the conversation topic had moved onto what Fox and Neo were going to do with their rings, meaning that Neo had caught her uncle up on everything in the two years since he died, a woman came along and left some drinks with them on the table, along with a tray._

 _"_ _Ruby?!" Neo uttered as she saw the face of the cloaked woman. Honestly, she thought that it was Ruby sheerly from the fashion taste in cloaks, the silver eyes and the hair style, but on further inspection she deduced that it couldn't be - her eyes carried extra years of knowledge, her smile less childish and more maternal, her cloak a brilliant white instead of sharing the colour of Ruby's namesake._

 _"_ _You know my daughter?" the woman asked. She was much more soft-spoken than her young doppelgänger, and far more relaxed than the scythe wielder could ever hope to be, even at 24 with her wife calming her every urge._

 _"_ _Yes, she's a lovely young woman, with a beautiful wife in Weiss Schnee. You would be proud of what she's become, and of what she's accomplished."_

 _"_ _Oh, I am." The cloaked woman wandered off and turned into nothing, leaving the relatives to continue talking with their drinks and a batch of cookies that appeared to be freshly baked, though from where Neo didn't know._

 _"_ _Uncle Lang?"_

 _"_ _Yes sweetie?"_

 _"_ _Why is Ruby's Mom here?" The man arched an eyebrow at the question. "I thought this was a place where only we existed."_

 _"_ _Oh no my child, not at all. The World of Void…"_

 _~void~_

 _~void~_

 _"…_ _there it is, is a place where many of the dead roam. Each soul has their own little pocket space that we can move about freely in and enter and exit each other's as easy as stepping into an open tent."_

 _"_ _So I_ _ **am**_ _dead."_

 _"_ _No flower, you're not dead. This place is vast, nigh infinite, but it still is not final. Think of this as a waiting room for the souls. The dead may come in and visit anyone who enters, like myself coming to visit you for example. But there is a world beyond this, one of the dead, where we both reside. Summer has always been motherly and loving, even before she had Ruby when she was alive, from what she told me, and does this," he gestured out to the cookies, "whenever someone enters the World of Void for a long-"_

 _~void~_

 _~void~_

 _"…_ _I'm still not used to that. For a long period of time. We had a connection in the sense that she grew up putting others first, as did I. We both lived in a family with a little girl who was not our own, but we cherished as if she was." He stroked her cheek as he said that. "Summer always wanted what was best for her girls, and I want the same for you."_

 _"_ _Uncle Lang…" Resting her hand on his own, holding it there as long as she could without a tearful expression, until she eventually removed it._

 _"_ _If you want to stay longer, you can."_

 _"_ _I do want to, but I fear I may have been here for too long. I know you said that there's no time in here, but I feel like I have overstayed my welcome."_

 _"_ _Nonsense, but I see your point." He offered her another cookie, which she took and bit into as they stood and headed towards the exit._

 _"_ _Will I remember this?" she asked as the gateway to real world grew closer, the sounds of reality seeping through into the white space as nothing more than faint muffled background noise._

 _"_ _If you want to remember it, then you shall. Otherwise, you can pass this off as a dream."_

 _"_ _But I do want to remember it. Seeing you again, saying goodbye properly, I want to remember this for the rest of my life."_

 _"_ _Then you will, because you want to." They embraced, the soon-to-be mother pouring as much love into the hug as she could. "I will miss you, Orchid."_

 _"_ _I'm going to miss you too Uncle Lang." They broke apart for the last time, then Neo turned and walked towards the exit. Opening the door lead to a space of darkness, striking a harsh contrast against a world of white, and stealing one last glance backwards at her uncle, stepped inside. Once the door was shut, she felt herself disappear._

* * *

"…eo, come o… …o wake up. I …omised I'd be by your side when you did."

' _And you've done a brilliant job,_ ' she thought, signalling to him that she was conscious once more.

"Welcome back to the land of the living sweetie," he greeted with a soft smile. "How you feeling?"

' _I'll tell you once I know how long I was out for._ '

"About 30 minutes. They moved you after the operation so that you'd come back in a comfortable bed rather than on an operating table."

' _That was considerate. So yeah, I feel great._ ' She started to lean up to kiss him, and taking the hint he closed most of the distance and let their lips meet. ' _I saw Uncle Lang._ '

"What do you mean?"

' _When I was unconscious, I went into this weird place that was completely white. I could speak, and I saw Uncle Lang and even Ruby's Mom. She even baked us cookies, and they were so good. Uncle Lang and I talked for hours before I came back._ ' The copper haired father simply smiled, not wanting to deny this but equally not 100% convinced he should accept this either.

Neo flexed and stretched her muscles, but stopped when she heard the distinct sound of paper crinkling in her hand. Fox assured her that no one had entered of left the room in the entire time he's been here since she left the operating theatre, so there was no way anyone could have put that there without him knowing. When she opened it up, her eyes widened in surprise as out fell two cookies, still fresh and warm as if just baked, and a note.

 **I shouldn't be doing this, but it's something to remember us both by  
Congratulations on the wedding and the birth  
Love,  
Summer Rose and Uncle Lang**

Neo took a bite of one of the cookies, and it tasted exactly like the ones she had earlier. ' _Convinced now?_ '

"Yeah, that'll do it." Neo read it through again, then saw the word 'birth' and remembered why they were here in the first place.

' _The baby! Fox, where's the baby?_ '

"She's just next door, don't worry. I'll ask if they can bring her in. After all the hard work you've done, it'd be nice to see the reward." With a silent sigh of relief, Fox got up and went to get the midwife from next door, kissing his wife before he did so.

' _Thank you Uncle Lang,_ ' she thought to herself, knowing that Fox could hear her talking, but honestly not caring, ' _for helping make this the best day I could ever ask for._ ' And although she couldn't see him, she could tell that he was smiling down on her as his way of saying 'thank you'.

* * *

So, back in late February / early March 2018 when I was writing this chapter, I decided I wanted to include Uncle Lang one last time. To realise this, I created this World of Void and had Lang and Summer appear in there. Then, in November of the same year, Rooster Teeth shows us Ozma and the God of Light in a white void dimension during the Lore Dump that was Volume 6 Chapter 3, and even showed Summer in the Volume 6 finale.

Now, I'm not saying I called it, but…

In all truths, my interpretation was meant to line up more with the movie depiction of Harry and Dumbledore's last meeting in Deathly Hallows. I thought it'd be a good way of making the whole story somewhat cyclical, with the first chapter beginning with a Harry Potter quote, and rounding off with some Harry Potter imagery.

Which means that yes, this is the final chapter of the story. One more will go up next week, the epilogue of it all, but this is really where it ends.

No, I'm not tearing up... it's ninjas. Ninjas cutting onions. Yeah, that's it.

As always, feedback - good or bad - is most appreciated


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